A Survey on Large Language Models for Recommendation

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as powerful tools in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and have recently gained significant attention in the domain of Recommendation Systems (RS). These models, trained on massive amounts of data using self-supervised learning, have demonstrated remarkable success in learning universal representations and have the potential to enhance various aspects of recommendation systems by some effective transfer techniques such as fine-tuning and prompt tuning, and so on. The crucial aspect of harnessing the power of language models in enhancing recommendation quality is the utilization of their high-quality representations of textual features and their extensive coverage of external knowledge to establish correlations between items and users. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the existing LLM-based recommendation systems, this survey presents a taxonomy that categorizes these models into two major paradigms, respectively Discriminative LLM for Recommendation (DLLM4Rec) and Generative LLM for Recommendation (GLLM4Rec), with the latter being systematically sorted out for the first time. Furthermore, we systematically review and analyze existing LLM-based recommendation systems within each paradigm, providing insights into their methodologies, techniques, and performance. Additionally, we identify key challenges and several valuable findings to provide researchers and practitioners with inspiration. We have also created a GitHub repository to index relevant papers on LLMs for recommendation, https://github.com/WLiK/LLM4Rec.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Preoperative Trans-catheter Arterial Chemoembolization and Laparoscopic Associating Liver Partition and Portal Vein Ligation for Staged Hepatectomy in Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma – A Case Report

Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) is considered as a major method to treat hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Associated liver partition and portal vein ligation for staged hepatectomy (ALPPS) has been used to treat patients with advanced HCC. This case report documents the safety, efficacy, and feasibility of TACE and laparoscopic ALPPS to treat the unresectable HCC of the right liver with right intra-hepatic metastasis in a male patient. Percutaneous and trans-femoral artery TACE was performed preoperatively, and the ALPPS stage-I at the 4th week and stage-II after 14 days was carried out. Postoperative outcome was assessed after 180 days of follow-up. It is concluded that preoperative TACE and laparoscopic ALPPS offer a fine treatment alternative to the patients with insufficient residual liver volume and relatively-advanced and extensive HCC.</p