Pretransplant locoregional therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma: encouraging but insufficient

Despite in the era of liver transplantation (LT) widely performed as an established curative treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the scarcity of liver donors has still been a well-nigh insurmountable barrier to access of LT. So, the bridging locoregional therapy (LRT) that treats HCC during the waiting time prior to LT emerged as an attractive strategy to reduce the risk of tumor progression and waitlist dropout, which came to an international consensus statement regarding the waitlist management of HCC patients (1). However, the actual advantage for LRT has not been clearly demonstrated in terms of recurrence and survival