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Liver cancer

On this page: resources published by other organisations, then the research assessed for this site.

This page points at research, and at resources published by other organisations. It is not advice about your own care or treatment.

Published by other organisations

4 booklets and reports published by other organisations. These belong to whoever wrote them and are not hosted here.

The library groups these together with stomach cancer and pancreatic cancer, so some of what follows is about those rather than about liver cancer. Each one is titled by its own publisher.

Research

4 papers on liver cancer, from the research assessed for this site. Each is summarised below in words written for this site, not the authors’ own.

  1. Equity of Cancer and Diabetes Co-Occurrence: A National Study With 44 Million Person-Years of Follow-Up (opens on the publisher’s website)

    JCO Global Oncology · 2023

    Jason Gurney, James Stanley, Andrea Teng, Bridget Robson, Nina Scott, Dianne Sika-Paotonu, Chunhuan Lao, Ross Lawrenson, Jeremy Krebs, Jonathan Koea

    What it found
    Linking national health records for close to five million people over 44 million person-years, the study found people with diabetes had higher cancer rates than people without it, in every ethnic group, with Māori carrying both the highest age-standardised rate (1,303.6 per 100,000 person-years) and the highest rate ratio (1.37, against 1.23-1.35 for the other groups measured). Uterine, pancreatic, kidney and liver cancers showed the strongest links to diabetes across all groups. It is a descriptive study: it establishes the size of the co-occurring burden by ethnicity, not why the gap exists.
    How it was done
    retrospective national cohort using linked administrative data, close to 5 million people, 44 million person-years, 2008-2018
    Why it matters
    It gives a population-level size and shape to the diabetes-cancer overlap Māori carry disproportionately, which matters for anyone planning screening or comorbidity care.
    What it does not settle
    Descriptive/observational - no causal claim is made or should be drawn. There is a related but distinct 2022 PLOS ONE paper by an overlapping author group with a very similar title ("Cancer and diabetes co-occurrence: A national study with 44 million person-years of follow-up", DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0276913) - worth not conflating the two.

    Full textFull text, via the open-access copy at PMC.

    Read it free: Equity of Cancer and Diabetes Co-Occurrence: A National Study With 44 Million Person-Years of Follow-Up (opens on another organisation’s website)DOI 10.1200/GO.22.00357

  2. Equity of timely access to liver and stomach cancer surgery for Indigenous patients in New Zealand: A national cohort study (opens on the publisher’s website)

    BMJ Open · 2022

    Jason Gurney, Diana Sarfati, James Stanley, Clarence Kerrison, Jonathan Koea

    What it found
    Maaori and European patients had similar overall rates of curative surgery for both cancers, but access diverged on specific procedures. For liver cancer, Maaori patients were about 66% less likely than European patients to receive a transplant (adjusted OR 0.33, 95% CI 0.19-0.60). For stomach cancer, Maaori patients were around twice as likely to have a palliative bypass procedure (enteroenterostomy) rather than curative surgery (adjusted OR 1.98, 95% CI 1.31-2.99). Only around a third of all liver cancer patients, Maaori or European, had documented surgical treatment of any kind.
    How it was done
    national cohort study using linked NZ Cancer Registry and National Minimum Dataset records, 2007-2019; 866 Maaori vs 2,460 European liver cancer patients, 953 Maaori vs 3,192 European stomach cancer patients
    Why it matters
    It shows the inequity for these two cancers sits inside specific treatment decisions - who gets a transplant, who gets a curative resection versus a palliative bypass - rather than in whether surgery happens at all.
    What it does not settle
    Registry-based analysis; the paper cannot say why the transplant and bypass gaps exist, only that they exist.

    Full textFull text, via BMJ Open, which is open access.

    Read it free: Equity of timely access to liver and stomach cancer surgery for Indigenous patients in New Zealand: A national cohort study (opens on another organisation’s website)DOI 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-058749

  3. Equity of travel required to access first definitive surgery for liver or stomach cancer in New Zealand (opens on the publisher’s website)

    PLOS ONE · 2022

    Jason Gurney, Jesse Whitehead, Clarence Kerrison, James Stanley, Diana Sarfati, Jonathan Koea

    What it found
    For liver cancer, Maaori patients travelled much further for surgery than European patients: a median 121km versus 56km, and a median 123 minutes versus 59 minutes. Maaori patients were more likely to travel over 200km (36% versus 29%, adjusted OR 1.48, 95% CI 1.09-2.01). For stomach cancer the paper found no significant difference in travel distance between the two groups, both travelling a median of around 21-22km.
    How it was done
    national registry analysis using GIS to calculate travel distance and time, 2007-2019; same cohort as the companion surgery-access paper - 866 Maaori vs 2,460 European liver cancer patients, 953 Maaori vs 3,192 European stomach cancer patients
    Why it matters
    Travel burden for liver cancer surgery falls unevenly on Maaori patients specifically, while stomach cancer - where surgery is more geographically distributed - shows no such gap, pointing to where centralised care creates an access cost.
    What it does not settle
    Registry-based, distance calculated by GIS rather than reported by patients; does not capture cost, time off work or whether a patient travelled with whaanau.

    Full textFull text, via PLOS ONE, which is open access.

    Read it free: Equity of travel required to access first definitive surgery for liver or stomach cancer in New Zealand (opens on another organisation’s website)DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0269593

  4. The past, present and future of liver cancer control for Māori (opens on the publisher’s website)

    New Zealand Medical Journal · 2022

    Sydney Clough, Tara Cleverley, Clarence Kerrison, Matire Harwood, Jonathan Koea, Jason K Gurney

    What it found
    The paper reviews why liver cancer hits Māori harder: it is one of the top five causes of Māori cancer death, and incidence keeps rising for Māori while staying flat for non-Māori. It traces this to hepatitis B and C, which drive about 80% of hepatocellular carcinoma, and to gaps in New Zealand's response - as of 2018 an estimated 333,906 Māori over 30 remained unvaccinated for hepatitis B, and only 19% of people with hepatitis B nationally were enrolled in monitoring by late 2019. The authors call for a nationally coordinated primary-care programme to detect and treat hepatitis B and C and screen high-risk patients, run with Māori-led vaccination and engagement rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
    How it was done
    narrative literature review (viewpoint), no new primary data
    Why it matters
    It sets out a specific, actionable gap - the absence of coordinated national hepatitis screening and surveillance - as the main lever behind Māori liver cancer outcomes, rather than treating the disparity as unexplained.
    What it does not settle
    A narrative rather than systematic review, so it summarises prior published figures (some, like the 2018 vaccination count, are now several years old) rather than presenting new analysis.

    Full textFull text, read in full, via nzmj.org.nz.

    Read it free: The past, present and future of liver cancer control for Māori (opens on another organisation’s website)DOI 10.26635/6965.5852

How this page was put together

The research summaries

Each summary was written for this site, and it is not the authors’ own abstract. None of it has been reviewed by Hei Āhuru Mōwai. Of the papers listed here, 4 were read in full. Each entry carries the note of what was read, because a summary built from an abstract carries less weight than one built from the paper.

Resources published by other organisations

Each one opens a record on this site naming the publisher, carrying their own note about the edition and about how they are funded where they give one. The document itself is on the publisher’s website. None of it is hosted here, and it remains theirs.

Which of these appear, and how they are grouped, is a choice made for this site. It is not Hei Āhuru Mōwai’s view on what any of them says.

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