Abstract: Objective Early diagnosis is of vital clinical significance in promoting survival in patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) has been widely applied in the diagnosis of primary HCC, but its sensitivity and specificity are unsatisfactory. Therefore, it is necessary to identify novel diagnostic biomarkers to improve the diagnosis efficacy.Methods Patients with clinically diagnosed HCC or at high risk of HCC in our hospital from January 2019 to August 2019 were enrolled. The diagnostic value of AFP, oligosaccharide chain detection (G-test), and their combination for HCC was analyzed.Results A total of 73 patients were included. Among them, 30 HCC patients were confirmed by pathology or imaging combined with AFP. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC-AUC) of G-test was 0.701, and the ROC-AUC of AFP was 0.680. There was no significant difference in the sensitivity between them (P=0.7648). Furthermore, the ROC-AUC of the combination of G-test and AFP was 0.671. The sensitivity and the specificity of the combination were 90.0% and 93.0%, which were significantly higher those of AFP alone.Conclusion G-test combined with AFP could improve diagnostic yield for HCC.

Key words: Hepatocellular carcinoma, Glycan-test, Alpha-fetoprotein, Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, Retrospective study