did not reach statistical significancep = 0.1258
Patients with more advanced TNM stages (TNM II-IV) (3.73 CTCs/mL, n = 26) had higher number of CTCs compared to early stage HCC patients (TNM 0-I) (2.76 CTCs/mL, n = 16), however this did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.1258) (Fig. 2B ).