الفهرس 
Introduction
Aim of the workOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a neoplasm with a dismal prognosis, in part, due to the fact that diagnosis is frequently made at an advanced tumor stage precluding effective treatment; it accounts to 85-90% of all primary liver cancer. In Egypt, there is a growing incidence of HCC, which represents the leading cause of death from all other cancer sites. HCC has nearly doubled over the last decade from 4% in 1993 to 7.2% in 2002. HCC is the second most common cancer in men and the 6th most common cancer in women with incidence of 10-20/100,000.
Screening of HCC depends mainly on abdominal US and AFP level estimation as recommended by AASLD, EASL, and JSH. The interval time for screening is based on tumor doubling time, which generally is considered to occur in 6 to 12 months. The 2011 AASLD guidelines recommend a screening interval of every 6 months.
Our study included 100 physicians who worked in Assiut governorate hospitals at the following departments; Internal medicine, Tropical medicine and Gastroenterology and oncology and named as group A (medicine departments) and General surgery named as group B (surgical departments). It was between January and June 2016.
The present study was designed to investigate physicians’ awareness of HCC screening and different lines of therapy. We found that majority of the included physicians (96%) have knowledge about the risk factors for HCC including those with chronic hepatitis B or C and those with liver cirrhosis that is consistent the Practice Guidelines from AASLD from 2011 which recommended HCC surveillance for patients at high risk of developing HCC.
The results of our study showed no effect of physicians’ age and sex on their knowledge about risk factors on HCC in contrast to specialty and duration of experience where those from medicine departments and those with experience more than 5 years have more knowledge than those from surgical departments and those with experience less than 5 years. Fifty nine physicians (59%) considered that US and AFP are the main tools for screening those at risk of HCC. Forty six physicians (46%) included in our questionnaire considered that screening interval should be done every 6 months. Thirty (30%) physicians thought that vaccination against HBV infection is very important to reduce the incidence of HCC. Physicians from surgical departments have more knowledge about curative therapy of HCC while those physicians from medicine departments have more knowledge about palliation therapy of HCC. There was no effect of the sex and age of physicians on their knowledge about curative and palliative therapy of HCC in contrast duration of experience has effect on their knowledge where those with experience more than 5 years have knowledge more.