The analysis of contrast-enhanced ultrasound features of the liver in male patients with liver cancer and unhealthy life habits under 50 years-of-age

Abstract

To analyze the contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) features of livers in male patients under 50 years-of-age with liver cancer and unhealthy life habits. A total of 89 male patients with liver cancer and unhealthy life habits were included in the observation group (all of these patients were first diagnosed with liver cancer when they were <50 years-of-age) and 60 male patients of the same age with benign liver lesions admitted during the same period were included in the control group. All patients had undergone CEUS examination. We summarized and compared the features of liver CEUS from patients in the two groups and analyzed the relationship between liver CEUS results and pathological features. The time to enhancement, enhancement duration and the clearance time of cancer tissues were all significantly shorter in patients from the observation group than those in the control group (p < 0.05). Enhancement patterns of cancer tissues and benign lesion tissues in patients in the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group (p < 0.05). Cancerous tissues had fast wash-in and fast wash-out features (93.2%), while benign lesions had slow wash-in and slow wash-out features (60.00%). The proportion of patients with microvascular invasion (MVI)-positive lesions showing more than a 15% increase in maximum diameter was significantly larger than those with MVI-negative lesions (p < 0.05). The differences in enhancement features between liver cancer lesions with various differentiation grades in the portal phase and the delayed phase were statistically significant (p < 0.05). Our findings show that CEUS has high clinical value for diagnosing liver cancer and can be used to judge the MVI status and differentiation grade of liver cancer lesions, thus providing a reference for diagnosing liver cancer and its severity.