Reply to "Hepatocellular carcinoma in thalassemia and other hemoglobinopathies".

Furthermore, cirrhosis was present in 83% of patients with transfusion-dependent thalassemia (45 of 54), in 92% of patients with non-transfusion-dependent thalassemia (12 of 13), and in 75% of patients with sickle cell disease (6 of 8; I p i = .5). Only for 30 of the patients with cirrhosis do we have the date of the diagnosis: 25 of 30 (83%) had a previous diagnosis, and 5 of 30 (17%) had a simultaneous diagnosis. We thank Dr Mancuso and colleagues for their knowledgeable comments about our study.[1] In particular, one point raised is that the study does not address the question of the rates of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with and without concomitant cirrhosis. [Extracted from the article]