Special Report Evidence-based Clinical Practice Guidelines for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: The Japan Society of Hepatology 2013 update (3rd JSH-HCC Guidelines) Norihiro Kokudo, Kiyoshi Hasegawa, Masaaki Akahane, Hiroshi Igaki, Namiki Izumi, Takafumi Ichida, Shinji Uemoto, Shuichi Kaneko, Seiji Kawasaki, Yonson Ku, Masatoshi Kudo, Shoji Kubo, Tadatoshi Takayama, Ryosuke Tateishi, Takashi Fukuda, Osamu Matsui, Yutaka Matsuyama, Takamichi Murakami, Shigeki Arii, Masatoshi Okazaki and Masatoshi Makuuchi The Committee for Revision of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Tokyo, Japan The 3rd version of Clinical Practice Guidelines for Hepatocel- lular Carcinoma was revised by the Japan Society of Hepatology, according to the methodology of evidence-based medicine, which was published in October 2013 in Japanese. Here, we briefly describe new or changed recommendations with a special reference to the two algorithms for surveil- lance, diagnosis, and treatment. Key words: algorithm for surveillance and diagnosis, algorithm for treatment, clinical practice guidelines, clinical question, evidence-based medicine INTRODUCTION T HE SECOND VERSION of Evidence-based Clinical Practice Guidelines for Hepatocellular Carcinoma (2nd JSH-HCC Guidelines) conducted by the Japan Society of Hepatology (JSH) was published in 2009 in Japanese, and its English version was released in 2010. 1 Because new knowledge and information have been increasingly accumulated since the end-point of the published work search in June 2007, the second revision was initiated in September 2011, and the new third version was published in October 2013 in Japanese. As was the case in the first 2–4 and second 1 versions of the JSH-HCC Guidelines, the third was strictly revised by the methodology of evidence-based medicine. In the revision procedures, we set a total of 57 clinical ques- tions (CQ), constructed retrieval styles for each CQ, and systematically searched scientific papers (n = 6750 in total) published between July 2007 and December 2011 in the medical databases (PubMed and Medline) by the retrieval styles. The entire published work search formula is open to the public (https://www.jsh.or.jp/ English/), which has not been always the case in other HCC guidelines. After critical reading of all abstracts and sometimes whole manuscripts (when necessary) for a total of 1648 relevant publications, we finally selected a total of 596 papers, wrote recommen- dations for each CQ and decided the grade of the recommendations. The full English version of the 3rd JSH Guidelines is available including the retrieval styles for all clinical questions on the JSH website (https://www.jsh.or.jp/ English/). Herein, we highlight the important revision points in recommendations and algorithms in the new guidelines. ALGORITHM FOR SURVEILLANCE AND DIAGNOSIS T HE FUNDAMENTAL STRATEGY for HCC surveil- lance and diagnosis is demonstrated in a revised Correspondence: Dr Norihiro Kokudo, Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery Division, Department of Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan. Email: kokudo-2su@h.u-tokyo.ac.jp Received 8 November 2014; revision 10 December 2014; accepted 11 December 2014. doi: 10.1111/hepr.12464 © 2015 The Japan Society of Hepatology 123 Hepatology Research 2015; 45: 123–127 guide.medlive.cn