ALB and cancer: At present, the staging systems for predicting and evaluating the prognosis of HCC patients include the tumor node metastasis (TNM) stage (10), Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage (11), Okuda grade (12), Cancer of the Liver Italian Program (CLIP) score (13), Chinese University Prognostic Index (CUPI) (14), Japan Integrated Staging (JIS) (15), and albumin–bilirubin (ALBI) grade (16).