Mehta V, Goyal MK, Gupta YK, Gupta A, Khubber M, Sehgal T, Mehta P, Goyal O. Liver stiffness at baseline as a marker of hepatocellular carcinoma in cirrhosis: A matched analysis. World J Gastrointest Pathophysiol 2026; 17(2): 120603 [DOI: 10.4291/wjgp.v17.i2.120603]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Manjeet Kumar Goyal, Department of Internal Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital, 1 Akron General Avenue, Akron, OH 44308, United States. manjeetgoyal@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
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research-article
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Mehta V, Goyal MK, Gupta YK, Gupta A, Khubber M, Sehgal T, Mehta P, Goyal O. Liver stiffness at baseline as a marker of hepatocellular carcinoma in cirrhosis: A matched analysis. World J Gastrointest Pathophysiol 2026; 17(2): 120603 [DOI: 10.4291/wjgp.v17.i2.120603]
Varun Mehta, Yogesh Kumar Gupta, Abhinav Gupta, Manisha Khubber, Prabhav Mehta, Omesh Goyal, Department of Gastroenterology, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana 141001, Punjab, India
Manjeet Kumar Goyal, Department of Internal Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital, Akron, OH 44308, United States
Tanisha Sehgal, Department of Internal Medicine, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana 141001, Punjab, India
Co-first authors: Varun Mehta and Manjeet Kumar Goyal.
Author contributions: Mehta V and Goyal MK provided equal contributions, meriting co-first authorship, including conceptualization of the study, design of the methodology, and drafting of the original manuscript; Gupta YK, Mehta V, Khubber M, Mehta P and Gupta A performed the investigation and data collation; Goyal MK, Mehta P and Sehgal T generated the visualization of data; all authors edited each subsequent version of the manuscript; Goyal O and Goyal MK supervised the study and validated the data; all authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The Institutional Review Board of Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, India provided approval for this study (Approval No. DMCH/IEC/2025/407).
Informed consent statement: The requirement for informed consent was waived due to the retrospective nature of study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: Data are available upon reasonable request to Manjeet K Goyal or Varun Mehta.
Corresponding author: Manjeet Kumar Goyal, Department of Internal Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital, 1 Akron General Avenue, Akron, OH 44308, United States. manjeetgoyal@gmail.com
Received: March 3, 2026 Revised: April 13, 2026 Accepted: April 23, 2026 Published online: June 22, 2026 Processing time: 105 Days and 14.9 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) surveillance in cirrhosis remains imperfect, with a substantial proportion of tumors detected at advanced stages despite guideline-recommended ultrasound-based screening. In this matched case–control study, baseline liver stiffness measurement (LSM) assessed by transient elastography independently stratified HCC risk among patients with established cirrhosis. Higher LSM values were strongly associated with HCC, with excellent discriminative performance and a clinically relevant threshold identifying patients at particularly high risk. These findings support the integration of LSM into HCC risk stratification frameworks and suggest that liver stiffness–guided, individualized surveillance strategies may improve early detection in cirrhosis.
