liver cancer stage » Liver Cancer Treatments

Liver Cancer Treatments – Liver Transplantation

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:19:36 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments – Liver Transplantation
Liver Cancer Treatments – Liver Transplantation is offered in many institutions for patients with hepatocellular carcinomas of limited extent. These tumors have to be either a solitary lesion of less than five centimeters or up to three lesions of three centimeters or less.
During Liver Cancer Treatments, patients with tumors over this size or number have historically been thought to fare poorly with rapid tumor occurrence in most organ recipients. The most recent meeting of the American Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association included a significant discussion among surgeons who felt that liver transplantation may have a place with even larger tumors. As with many questions in medicine, this question will be answered in time.

Liver Cancer Treatments – Liver Transplantation as a technique also suffers also from the limited number of cadaveric organ donors. As a practical matter, however, during Liver Cancer Treatments – Liver Transplantation a change last year in the national system which governs which patients are transplanted has placed HCC patients with small tumors high up on the transplantation list. The patient with a small hepatocellular carcinoma may have the choice between three options: resection, ablation, and Liver Cancer Treatments – Liver Transplantation.

Liver Cancer Treatments- Isolated Liver Perfusion

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:17:45 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments- Isolated Liver Perfusion
Liver Cancer Treatments- Isolated Liver Perfusion is a still experimental technique done in only a few locations.
A group at the NCI is currently investigating this approach. It is quite invasive and technically demanding.
Also the group in Cincinnati is using Liver Cancer Treatments- Isolated Liver Perfusion on some patients.
The number of patients actually treated by isolated liver perfusion to date is still quite small. it is not believe that Liver Cancer Treatments- Isolated Liver Perfusion will turn out to be a widely used technique, in part because of the technical demands and risks, but mainly because of the other less drastic and more successful options available.

Liver Cancer Treatments – Portal Vein Embolization

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:10:59 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments – Portal Vein Embolization
Liver Cancer Treatments – Portal Vein Embolization is a liver cancer treatments technique originally pioneered in the 1980’s by a leader in liver surgery from Japan, Masatochi Makuuchi.
Liver Cancer Treatments – Portal Vein Embolization is used at present to cause the atrophy or shrinking of a part of the liver and the hypertrophy or extra growth of the remaining liver.

Ideal Candidates for Liver Cancer Treatments – Portal Vein Embolization
The setting in which this can be of benefit is in the preoperative patient in which you need to shrink the bad liver that you are going to remove and grow the good liver that you are going to leave behind. Liver Cancer Treatments – Portal Vein Embolization is a useful technique in some patients in which a large resection needs to be done and the remaining liver will be a fairly small volume. Most liver cancer patients do not require this technique.

Liver Cancer Treatments – Interstitial Laser Photocoagulation and Microwave

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:05:56 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments - Interstitial Laser Photocoagulation and Microwave
Liver Cancer Treatments - Interstitial Laser Photocoagulation and Microwave, Both of these techniques are additional ways to directly injure or kill tumors within the liver.
However, Liver Cancer Treatments - Interstitial Laser Photocoagulation and Microwave are in their infancy and are unable to kill volumes of tumor the way RFA and cryotherapy can.
A surgeon in the Northeast named David Ianitti in Providence, Rhode Island is investigating this now.

Liver Cancer Treatments – Hepatic Artery Infusion

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:02:08 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments – Hepatic Artery Infusion
Liver Cancer Treatments – Hepatic Artery Infusion is the infusion of chemotherapeutic agents into the major artery to the liver (the hepatic artery).
Liver Cancer Treatments – Hepatic Artery Infusion has generally been used in patients with colon or rectal metastases to the liver.
A pump is implanted at an operation in which a tube (catheter) is threaded into the hepatic artery. Subsequently, chemotherapy drugs are injected periodically through the skin into the chamber of the pump, which then through a gas driven bellows puts the right amount of chemotherapy drug right into the liver itself.

Liver Cancer Treatments – Radiotherapy

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:56:46 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments – Radiotherapy
Liver Cancer Treatments – Radiotherapy has traditionally not been worthwhile for the patient with either primary cancer of or metastatic to the liver.
Liver Cancer Treatments – Radiotherapy can certainly injure tumor cells. However, the doses necessary to kill tumor cells severely injure the surrounding normal liver cells, resulting in radiation induced hepatitis in a significant percentage of patients.
New computer generated dosing techniques such as conformal radiation will allow a tighter focus on the diseased liver, allowing sparing of radiographically uninvolved liver. However, at present, Liver Cancer Treatments – Radiotherapy is still a second to third line therapy.

Liver Cancer Treatments- Alcohol Injection

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:49:51 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments- Alcohol Injection
Liver Cancer Treatments- Alcohol Injection Therapy (PEI or PEIT) is currently a wild card in the management of hepatocellular carcinoma in the United States.
Liver Cancer Treatments- Alcohol Injection has been embraced as a potential low tech solution to HCC’s in Europe—especially Italy—as well as in the Far East in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Although long term cures are rare, response rates and getting to the “NED state” are frequent. Liver Cancer Treatments- Alcohol Injection is an innovative, low morbidity technique with real benefit. Liver Cancer Treatments- Alcohol Injection can be given in the OR as a relatively large volume treatment or, more commonly, as an outpatient procedure under sonographic guidance in the office or radiology department setting.
Liver Cancer Treatments- Alcohol Injection PEI has really not caught on yet in most centers in the United States, I think it is a worthwhile addition to the arrows in the surgeon’s quiver. It does not appear that Liver Cancer Treatments- Alcohol Injection will be as effective in the patient with metastatic cancer to the liver, since most metastases are relatively hard and avascular in a normally soft liver. This allows spillage of the alcohol into the surrounding liver substance, hurting the liver next to the tumor while not killing the tumor because the alcohol doesn’t stay in place long enough to have the desired effect. On the other hand, in the hard, cirrhotic liver with a highly vascular and soft HCC, PEI is worth consideration as a method of liver cancer treatments.

Liver Cancer Treatments – Chemoembolization

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:42:43 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments – Chemoembolization
Liver Cancer Treatments – Chemoembolization is also known as TACE, standing for transarterial chemoembolization.
In this technique an interventional radiologist injects a Liver Cancer Treatments – chemotherapeutic agent directly into the arteries supplying a tumor within the liver. Frequently lipiodol is also injected since lipiodol, which is actually poppyseed oil, will hold the chemical there

within the injected artery for a longer time. Liver Cancer Treatments – chemoembolization may be superior to bland embolization, which is the injection of agents to cause the artery to clot off, without adding chemotherapy drugs along with the clotting agents. Although we have no proof that TACE is better than plain (or bland) embolization alone, it is thought by many to be better.
This Liver Cancer Treatments is used more frequently in the patient with hepatocellular carcinoma than in the patient with metastasis from a cancer of the colon or rectum. A post-embolization syndrome does occur in many patients after TACE that makes them sick for several days post-procedure. TACE is a second line therapy that should only be considered after ablation or resection have been ruled out.

At present in Gainesville no interventional radiologists perform TACE for liver cancer treatments. In the appropriate

instance, it is discussing TACE with the patient and his or her family and then send the patient to one of three places, Emory, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, or MD Anderson Cancer Center. I have connections with an appropriate physician at each of these locations.

Liver Cancer Treatments – Chemotherapy

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:33:07 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments – Chemotherapy
Liver Cancer Treatments – Chemotherapy has a traditional response rate with both primary and metastatic cancers in the twenty percent range.
A response is a situation in which there is either cancer shrinkage for a period of a few months or failure of the cancer to progress for a similar time. While it is not minimizing the possibility of this Liver Cancer Treatments modality to provide real benefit, Liver Cancer Treatments – chemotherapy is a fallback position and will only be offered in combination with other Liver Cancer Treatments methods, when other Liver Cancer Treatments have failed, when the situation is advanced beyond the point in which other Liver Cancer Treatments methods can help, or at times in advanced situations but ones in which we hope to downstage the patient to the point that he or she will be a candidate for other therapies.

Liver Cancer Treatments – Cryosurgery

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:26:25 +0000

Liver Cancer Treatments – Cryosurgery
This is a kind of specials Liver Cancer Treatments, it is freezing the tumor to convert the cancer and the immediate area around it into an “ice ball”.
A number of locations in the U.S.A do continue to utilize this technique.
The complication rate is higher than in RFA and the patient population in which it is a valid technique is the same as the Liver Cancer Treatments – RFA population of patients.
On the other hand, this Liver Cancer Treatments to visualize the area killed by freezing is better than with Liver Cancer Treatments – RFA since the “iceball” is well seen at sonography, whereas bubbles forming with heating of the tumor can make it hard to see how much tissue has been killed. The decision between RFA and cryotherapy is up to the surgeon. Radiofrequency ablation is the most widespread technique at this time, in spite of its shorter history. My technique of choice in this patient group will be radiofrequency ablation.