Abstract
BACKGROUND: As the population is aging, the indication for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) resection in patients aged over 80 years will increase. Japan is facing the most aging society worldwide. We examined the safety of hepatectomy in octogenarians and nonagenarians using large-scale data from the Diagnosis Procedure Combination database, a national administrative database in Japan. METHOD: We conducted a survey to collect data for all inpatients from 2007 and 2012. We identified 27,094 patients who underwent hepatectomy for HCC. Patients' age was divided into the following five categories: ≤59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-84, and ≥85 years (n = 5,099, 8,809, 10,805, 2,011, and 370, respectively). The primary outcomes of hepatectomy were in-hospital death within 90 days and complications. Logistic regression analyses were performed to analyze the impact of age on the outcomes with the adjustment of other individual-level factors. RESULTS: The mortality and morbidity rates were 2.6 and 23.4%, respectively. Compared with patients in their 70s, the mortality rate was significantly lower in patients aged ≤59 years (odds ratio [OR], 0.34; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.26-0.45; p < 0.01) and in those in their 60s (OR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.53-0.74; p < 0.01). However, no significant difference was observed in patients aged 80-84 years (OR, 1.03; 95% CI, 0.78-1.385; p = 0.844) and those aged ≥85 years (OR, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.50-1.79; p = 0.870). Based on the multivariate logistic regression analysis, age ≥70 years, male gender, low hospital volume, and surgical procedure were identified as independent predictors of mortality. CONCLUSIONS: The operative risk for hepatectomy gradually increases with age until patients are in their 70s, and it appears to reach a plateau among septuagenarian. Indeed, age over 70 years can also be a risk factor for HCC. By considering the aging risk, surgeons can attain good outcome after hepatectomy even in octo- and nonagenarian patients.