Clinical value of circulating liver cancer cells for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma: A meta-analysis.

This meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the clinical value of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) for liver tumor size, clinical stage and metastasis. The clinical studies on CTCs and liver cancer were electronically and manually retrieved and Review Manager 5.1 software was used to evaluate the quality of the obtained studies, extract data and conduct a meta-analysis. A total of 5 studies including 535 liver cancer patients were identified. The results of the meta-analysis revealed that the odds ratio (OR) values of CTCs-positive rates between large and small tumor size, tumor stage I/II and III/IV, as well as metastatic and non-metastatic groups were 12.12 (95% CI: 7.84-18.74), 0.10 (95% CI: 0.07-0.16) and 0.09 (95% CI: 0.05-0.15), respectively, which demonstrated a significant difference. In conclusion, the detection of CTCs in the peripheral blood was clearly associated with tumor size, clinical stage and metastasis.