Copyright
©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Oct 27, 2025; 17(10): 112445
Published online Oct 27, 2025. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i10.112445
Published online Oct 27, 2025. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i10.112445
Splenectomy and hepatocellular carcinoma: Cause or confounder?
Seoung Hoon Kim, Organ Transplantation Center, National Cancer Center, Goyang 10408, South Korea
Author contributions: Kim SH conceived and designed the study, collected and analyzed the data, performed the analysis, wrote the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declares that he has no conflict of interest to disclose.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Seoung Hoon Kim, MD, PhD, Organ Transplantation Center, National Cancer Center, 323 Ilsan-ro, Ilsandong-gu, Goyang 10408, South Korea. kshlj@hanmail.net
Received: July 28, 2025
Revised: August 2, 2025
Accepted: September 28, 2025
Published online: October 27, 2025
Processing time: 92 Days and 3.5 Hours
Revised: August 2, 2025
Accepted: September 28, 2025
Published online: October 27, 2025
Processing time: 92 Days and 3.5 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This letter challenges the notion that splenectomy itself increases hepatocellular carcinoma risk. This letter emphasize that the primary driver is underlying liver disease, not splenectomy. Current evidence is largely based on retrospective studies, and well-designed prospective or randomized trials are needed to determine any independent effect of splenectomy on hepatocarcinogenesis.