a strong trendp = 0.053
As the BCLC staging system is the most widely used algorithm for treatment allocation and determination of prognosis of patients with HCC [ 2 ], we also performed subgroup analyses stratified according to BCLC stage, and found a significant prognostic effect of the combined score on overall survival only in the BCLC A group, although in BCLC B and C patients, a strong trend was observed ( p = 0.053 and 0.052, respectively) ( Figure 5 c).