Muparfostat for use in reducing intrahepatic tumor recurrence and increasing disease-free survival period in a hepatocellular carcinoma patient with microvascular invasion after curative liver resection, while excluding HCC patients with no vascular invasion and HCC patients with macrovascular invasion, is disclosed. The hepatocellular carcinoma patient with microvascular invasion is identified by examining a resected liver tumor sample from the HCC patient for the presence of microvascular invasion in the sample.
