ALB and portal hypertension: Multiple studies validated the prognostic value of serum albumin level in combination with other clinicopathological factors in predicting HCC recurrence after curative surgical resection, such as the albumin–bilirubin grade combined with the fibrosis-4 index, platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio, aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio, TNM stage, or clinically significant portal hypertension [28,29,30,31,32,33].