A Comparative Study on the Diagnostic Efficacy of Ultrasound Contrast LI-RADS Grading and the German ESCULAP Standards for the Diagnosis of Recurrent Hepatic Mass Lesions After Hepatocellular Carcinoma Surgery

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Conditions studied: Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) Prognosis, Contrast-enhanced Ultrasound

In brief

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the sixth most common malignant tumor worldwide, with a significantly increased incidence among patients with liver diseases. Even if HCC can be treated by surgical resection and ablation, the 5-year recurrence rate is as high as 50-70%. The Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System (LI-RADS), released by the American College of Radiology (ACR), is a classification management system specifically designed to evaluate liver lesions in high-risk HCC patients. Since its release in 2011, the CT/MRI LI-RADS has been updated to the 2018 version. Subsequently, the CEUS LI-RADS was introduced in 2016 and updated in 2017. The CEUS LI-RADS standard has relatively high specificity but lacks sensitivity. The ESCULAP (Erlanger Synopsis of Contrast-enhanced Ultrasound for Liver lesion Assessment in Patients at Risk) standard proposed by Schellhaas et al. in Germany has high sensitivity in diagnosing HCC in patients with liver diseases . However, there is currently a lack of research on the diagnostic efficacy of these two standards for the re-discovery of liver space-occupying lesions in patients with a history of HCC. This study aims to compare the diagnostic efficacy of the two standards for recurrent HCC in patients with a history of HCC.

Key facts

Study ID: NCT07600346
Run by: The First Hospital of Jilin University
People needed: 105
Starts: 2026-05-30
Expected to finish: 2027-05-30
Last updated by the study team: 2026-05-20

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

(1) At least 18 years old; (2) Has a previous history of liver cell cancer surgery or ablation, and has a newly developed liver lesion this time; (3) The new lesion completed a complete contrast-enhanced ultrasound examination within two weeks before the final diagnosis, and the dynamic imaging data is completely preserved; (4) The new lesion has a clear pathological or clinical diagnosis.

You may not qualify if…

(1) The quality of contrast-enhanced ultrasound images is poor, making it impossible to assess the critical phases; (2) New lesions that have been treated locally or systemically.

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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