Copyright
©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Assessment of clinical and radiological response to sorafenib in hepatocellular carcinoma patients
Rodolfo Sacco, Valeria Mismas, Antonio Romano, Marco Bertini, Michele Bertoni, Graziana Federici, Salvatore Metrangolo, Giuseppe Parisi, Emanuele Tumino, Giampaolo Bresci, Luca Giacomelli, Dipartimento di Gastroenterologia-UO Gastroenterologia e Malattie del Ricambio, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria Pisana, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Sara Marceglia, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, 20100 Milan, Italy
Irene Bargellini, Dipartimento di Radiologia-Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria Pisana, 56124 Pisa, Italy
Author contributions: All the authors provided substantial contributions to conception of the manuscript; helped drafting the article or making critical revisions related to important intellectual content of the manuscript; and approved the final version of the article to be published.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Rodolfo Sacco, MD, PhD, Dipartimento di Gastroenterologia-UO Gastroenterologia e Malattie del Ricambio, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria Pisana, Via Paradisa 2, 56124 Pisa, Italy. r.sacco@ao-pisa.toscana.it
Telephone: +39-50-997411 Fax: +39-50-997412
Received: August 29, 2014
Peer-review started: August 30, 2014
First decision: September 28, 2014
Revised: October 10, 2014
Accepted: November 17, 2014
Article in press: November 19, 2014
Published online: January 27, 2015
Peer-review started: August 30, 2014
First decision: September 28, 2014
Revised: October 10, 2014
Accepted: November 17, 2014
Article in press: November 19, 2014
Published online: January 27, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: The development of new treatment options for hepatocellular carcinoma has changed not only the way in which cancer is treated, but also how it is diagnosed and especially the assessment of tumor response. The traditional radiologic methods, which are mainly based on the evaluation of variations in tumor size, are considered insufficiently sensitive and unreliable in determining tumor progression when targeted therapies like sorafenib are involved. New assessment tools trying to combine morphological and vascular functional data to obtain an accurate measurement of tumor characteristics such as volume, density or vascularization, showed positive results in assessing patient’s response to therapy.