EPCAM and hepatocellular carcinoma: Several scholars have reported that HCC patients with microvascular invasion (MVI), epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM), programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression, and higher CD68 + cell density in peritumoral tissues have a significantly higher risk of recurrence or metastasis and cancer-related death [21–24]; thus, peritumoral tissues might have valuable predictive information of HCC prognosis.