1\. Background 1.1. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) HCC is the third most common cause of cancer death globally. It is also the second cause of cancer mortality in Korea, despite the incidence of HCC was fifth. The most important cause of this discrepancy is connected with the fact that the significant portion of the HCC is detected as unresectable status. 1.2. Standard treatment of the HCC At the point of HCC diagnosis, only 30% of the patients could receive standard curative treatment, like resection, liver transplantation, and radiofrequency ablation (RFA). Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) has been shown in randomized trials to improve survival compared with symptomatic therapy alone, in the patients without macrovascular involvement, extrahepatic disease and tumor related symptoms. However, in the recent review of TACE, TACE might be contraindicate or not recommended in the patients who showed vascular tumor invasion, more than 10 cm size, poor portal blood flow and/or repeated poor response. Recently, Sorafenib, which is one of the target agents, showed survival advantage on unresectable HCC patients in two randomized study. In those study, sorafenib improved approximately three month overall survival increment, however, the median survival duration was only 10.7 months in experiment group (received sorafenib), and even 6.5 months in Asian-Pacific trial. Additionally, the possibility that sorafenib effect could be reduced in the patients had hepatitis B virus (HBV) was suggested in the subgroup analysis. 1.3 Radiation therapy (RT) for the HCC The use of RT in HCC is increased with the radiation technological advances. In the unresectable patients, RT showed 50 to 60% response rate with the dose response relationship. Recently, stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) showed excellent local control and comparable survival rate in thoracic tumor. In the HCC, SBRT also showed 75 to 100% local control rate without significant elevation of the toxicities. One study reported that 24 to 54 Gy SBRT achieved 87% 1year local control and 17 months overall survival. The standard treatment of unresectable HCC is sorafenib, but Korean Liver Cancer Study Group (KLCSG) recommend RT as an option in localized unresectable HCC. Furthermore, Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) started randomized trial to confirm the effect of SBRT in unresectable HCC (RTOG 1112). Investigators previously reported the retrospective result that the higher dose SBRT achieved 2 year overall survival 87.9% and local control 85% in the patient who showed less than 5 cm solitary HCC without portal vein involvement. Based on those studies, we start this prospective study to evaluate the effectiveness and adverse event of SBRT in the patients who had solitary 3 cm or less size HCC without extrahepatic lesion and vascular involvement.
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To evaluate the SBRT effect on local progression free survival rate
Timeframe: Radiologic response will be evaluated at 3 month.
To evaluate the SBRT effect on adverse events
Timeframe: Adverse events will be evaluated at 3 month after SBRT.