ArticleCancer medicine2026
Advantage of Scheduled Upfront Lenvatinib Administration Followed by Transarterial Chemoembolization Therapy Over Lenvatinib Monotherapy in Patients With Unresectable Intermediate-Stage Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Multicenter Cohort Study.
Article in Cancer medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
23 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimCombining systemic chemotherapy with transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) has demonstrated improved outcomes, with promising results for the efficacy of lenvatinib pretreatment combined with TACE in single-arm studies involving patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a scheduled upfront lenvatinib combined with a TACE regimen in patients with HCC, representing both the first study to comparatively analyze this approach and to focus specifically on patients unsuitable for TACE.
methodsWe conducted a multicenter retrospective study between 2018 and 2024, enrolling 41 patients with unresectable Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer intermediate-stage HCC who were considered unsuitable for TACE owing to factors such as exceeding the up-to-7 criteria, having infiltrative HCC, or multiple asynchronous recurrent HCC. Of these patients, 25 received upfront lenvatinib administration prior to TACE (LEN-TACE group), followed by continuous lenvatinib and on-demand TACE, and 16 received lenvatinib monotherapy.
resultsRadiological evaluation revealed significantly higher complete response (CR) and objective response rates (ORR) in the LEN-TACE group than in the lenvatinib group. The median overall survival (OS) was not reached in the LEN-TACE group, whereas it was 16.2 months in the lenvatinib monotherapy group, indicating a significantly superior OS in the LEN-TACE group (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.99; 95% CI: 1.01-8.95; p = 0.0496). Superiority in both PFS and OS was also observed in the propensity score-matched (PSM) cohort for the LEN-TACE group.
conclusionScheduled upfront lenvatinib combined with TACE is superior to lenvatinib monotherapy for intermediate-stage HCC, particularly in patients unsuitable for TACE.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.