Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Clinical Review

Hepatocellular carcinoma for the non-specialist

BMJ 2009; 339 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.b5039 (Published 04 December 2009) Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b5039

Rapid Response:

Re: Prevention of hepatocellular carcinoma: Promoting smoking cessation is more evidence based than screening!

In his response to our short review on HCC, Alain Braillon
raises two important points. As regards smoking and risk of
hepatocellular carcinoma, we are not sure that the evidence
portrayed is as convincing as stated, but nevertheless concur
with the author that smoking cessation remains very sensible
advice for all patients with liver disease. As regards the
evidence for screening in HCC, again there is a lack of
randomised controlled studies in this field, but the
overwhelming clear consensus from multiple international
guidelines remains firmly in favour of screening with the aim of
early detection of malignancy.

Yours

Gideon Hirschfield

Competing interests:
None declared

Competing interests: No competing interests

06 January 2010
Gideon M Hirschfield
Assistant Professor
Liver Centre, Toronto Western Hospital