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.