الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
HCC is considered to be the commonest type of primary liver cancer. It is ranked as the sixth commonest type of cancer and the third cause of cancer related deaths. HCC has several risk factors. It has no specific symptoms or signs which is the main problem of HCC; the late diagnosis and poor prognosis.
Screening program is adopted in many countries in a trial for the early detection of HCC where curative treatment modalities are effective and thus improve the 5- year survival rate of patients. The available reliable tool of screening is abdominal U/S which is recommended to be done every six months. AFP is no longer supported as a screening tool.
Diagnosis of HCC depends mainly on radiological tools (ultrasonography and triphasic CT abdomen) and AFP, but recent studies reported AFP elevation in non-malignant conditions as well as non- hepatic malignancies.
It is obvious now the urgent need to develop a non- invasive diagnostic biomarker for the early detection of HCC. Recent studies revealed that endoglin may be associated with tumor angiogenesis and was strongly up-regulated in the endothelium of various tumor tissues compared with that in normal tissues.
The present study was designed to validate the role of serum endoglin in the diagnosis of HCC in Egyptian patients.
In order to achieve this goal, 30 HCC patients were included in the study. The diagnosis of HCC was based on serum levels of AFP, ultrasonography and triphasic CT. The study also included 30 cirrhotic patients without evidence of HCC (group II) and 20 healthy subjects as controls (group III).
All patients had thorough clinical evaluation. Abdominal ultrasonographic examination was performed to assess the characteristics of HCC. The HCC stage was assessed as Stage A, B and C using Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) staging system.
Serum AFP level was significantly higher in group I compared with groups II and III, while serum endoglin levels in patients with HCC were significantly higher than in cirrhotic patients and control group.