CA9 and cirrhosis of liver: To identify independent factors for predicting patient survival, we put all the clinical and pathological parameters that exhibited significant correlation with high tumor stage (including age, HBsAg status, Anti-HCV status, liver cirrhosis, serum AFP levels, tumor size, and tumor grade) and significant correlation with patient survival (including age, serum AFP levels, tumor size, tumor grade, and tumor stage) in univariate analysis, and CA-IX expression in multivariate analyses.