Objective：To investigate a simple procedure to establish an ideal animal model of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) featuring low mortality, high success rate, short period for tumor induction and tumorigenesis profile similar to human  HCC.
Methods：Forty Wistar rats, aged 2 months, were used. Firstly, all rats underwent subcutaneous hind-limb injection with 50% CCl4 oil solution at a dose of 0.3 mL/100 g twice a week for 2 weeks,  then injection was discontinued for 2 weeks. After that, the rats were fed with diethylnitrosamin (DEN, 95 μg/mL in drinking water) for 12 consecutive weeks.
Results：No death of rats occurred during the course of the study. The body weight of rats increased and the general state of rats was normal. HCC was successfully induced in all rats at the 16 weeks of the study.
Conclusions：A rat HCC model of low mortality and high success rate can be easily and stably induced  by DEN feeding with sensitivity enhancement by CCl4.