Table 4. TACE with non-TACE combination therapy compared to TACE alone/non-TACE modalities in the management of HCC.

BCLC: Barcelona clinical liver cancer; BSC: best supportive care; PVTT: portal vein tumor thrombosis; RFA: radiofrequency ablation; TACE: transarterial chemoembolization; HCC: hepatocellular carcinoma

References	Design	Subjects	Criteria for inclusion	TACE alone/TACE with non-TACE combination therapy	TACE alone/non-TACE	Outcome
Ren et al. (2019) [31]	Retrospective study	2447	BCLC stages A and B	TACE with RFA		Increased overall survival and progression-free survival in patients at one, three, five, and eight years when TACE was combined with RFA than TACE alone, concluding that the combination was effective regardless of the size.
Varghese et al. (2017) [32]	Observational study	124	BCLC B and C	TACE with sorafenib	TACE alone and sorafenib alone	TACE, along with sorafenib, was more efficacious than sorafenib or TACE alone by reducing the progression of tumor from 83.3% to 37.8%, improved partial response (43.2% vs. 3.3%), and showed significant overall survival from 9 months to 16 months.
Xiang et al. (2019) [33]	Retrospective study	1040	HCC patients with PVTT	TACE	BSC	Patients with PVTT type 1-3 were associated with a better overall survival when treated with TACE than BSC, regardless of whether BSC or TACE was employed, PVTT-4 showed the worst outcome.