A Prospective Study of Liver Regeneration After Radiotherapy Based on a New (Su’S) Target Area Delineation

Abstract

Background: In this study, we designed a new (Su’S) target area delineation to protect the normal liver during liver regeneration and prospectively evaluate liver regeneration after radiotherapy, as well as to explore the clinical factors of liver regeneration and established a model and nomogram. Methods: Thirty patients treated with preoperative downstaging radiotherapy were prospectively included in the training cohort, and 21 patients treated with postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy were included in the validation cohort. The cut-off points of each optimal predictor were obtained using receiver-operating characteristic analysis. A model and nomogram for liver regeneration after radiotherapy were developed and validated. Results: After radiotherapy, 12 (40%) and 13 (61.9%) patients in the training and validation cohorts experienced liver regeneration, respectively. The risk stratification model based on the cutoffs of standard residual liver volume spared from at least 20 Gy (SVs20 = 303.4 mL/m2) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT=43 u/L) was able to effectively discriminate the probability of liver regeneration. The model and nomogram of liver regeneration based on SVs20 and ALT showed good prediction performance (AUC=0.759) in the training cohort and performed well (AUC=0.808) in the validation cohort. Conclusions: SVs20 and ALT were optimal predictors of liver regeneration. This model may be beneficial to the constraints of the normal liver outside the radiotherapy-targeted areas.