What is small liver cancer?

Primary liver cancer is the third most common cancer in my country, causing 100,000 deaths each year, and a total of 250,000 deaths worldwide each year. Whether in China or abroad, the overall five-year survival rate does not exceed 3%, because once most patients develop symptoms, the tumor is already very large and difficult to cure. Therefore, early detection of small liver cancer and timely and effective treatment are very important for liver cancer patients.

Small liver cancer generally refers to liver cancer with a diameter of less than 5 cm, which is a relatively early liver cancer. The diagnosis and treatment of small liver cancer has become the most important direction for improving the overall prognosis of liver cancer and making liver cancer patients cured at present and in the near future. To discover small liver cancer, it is necessary to change from "waiting for patients" to "looking for patients", that is, to conduct blood alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) measurement and/or ultrasound monitoring in "healthy" people at high risk of liver cancer. The high-risk population refers to those who are over 40 years old, have a history of hepatitis for more than 5 years and/or are positive for hepatitis B surface antigen. The diagnosis should be made based on AFP, ultrasound, X-ray computed tomography and hepatic angiography when the patient has no obvious discomfort and there is no space-occupying lesion in the isotope examination.

At this point, a set of guidelines has gradually been formed for the treatment of small hepatocellular carcinoma, namely, for patients with small hepatocellular carcinoma whose liver function can still tolerate surgery, surgery should be performed as early as possible, and efforts should be made to completely remove the tumor; for those who cannot be removed, efforts should be made to eliminate as much of the tumor as possible by various means; and early re-surgery should be actively adopted for early recurrence and single lung metastasis.