TY - JOUR T1 - Needle-track seeding following biopsy of liver lesions in the diagnosis of hepatocellular cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis JF - Gut JO - Gut SP - 887 LP - 888 VL - 58 IS - 6 AU - A L Young AU - J P A Lodge Y1 - 2009/06/01 UR - http://gut.bmj.com/content/58/6/887.3.abstract N2 - We congratulate Silva et al (Gut 2008;57:1592–6) for addressing an important issue in the management of patients with suspected hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We agree with the authors that biopsy of liver lesions should not be performed indiscriminately and that they should be undertaken preferably within or at least only after consultation with a liver transplant centre.Some HCCs can be managed successfully with resection. However, our own series of 85 patients showed that biopsy of such lesions, almost exclusively being carried out before referral almost halved the patients’ chance of disease free survival at 5 years post-resection (52% vs 24%).1 We agree that a … ER -