Table 3.

The relation between CTCs and Clinicopathological variables of HCC patients.

Variable	P value
	CTCs' Positivity Rate	CTCs number
Age	0.348a	0.074b
Sex	1.000a	0.974b
Etiology	0.796c	0.903c
Child-Pugh class	0.334c	0.340c
AFP	0.079c	0.309d
Tumor number	0.339a	0.098b
Portal vein thrombus	0.006a	0.000b
Tumor size (cm)	0.018c	0.005c
TNM stagee	0.004c	0.000c

Abbreviation: NS, not significant.

^a P values from Fisher's exact test.

^b P values from the Mann-Whitney test

^c P values from Spearman rank correlation analysis.

^d P values from Kruskal-Wallis test

^e Sixth edition of UICC TNM staging system of HCC (2002).