To investigate whether the presence of PNS was associated with poorer prognosis, we examined its association with established indicators of poor prognosis in HCC, vis-à-vis age, serum AFP levels, bilobar involvement, multicentric disease, portal vein involvement, distant metastases, tumor stage according to the tumor, node, metastasis (TNM) classification, and Child-Pugh score at diagnosis. Here, AFP is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.