Symptoms and characteristics of early primary liver cancer

Primary liver cancer has an insidious onset and lacks typical symptoms in the early stages. Some patients may even have advanced liver cancer but still have no obvious symptoms. Early cases detected by AFP screening may have no symptoms or signs, which is called subclinical liver cancer. Patients who have symptoms and seek medical treatment on their own are mostly in the middle and late stages, often with symptoms such as liver pain, loss of appetite, fatigue, weight loss and liver enlargement. Their main characteristics are as follows:

jaundice

It usually appears in the late stage and may be caused by liver cell damage, or by compression or invasion of the bile duct near the liver porta hepatis by the cancer mass, or by bile duct obstruction caused by the detachment of cancer tissue and blood clots.

Signs of cirrhosis

Patients with liver cancer and portal hypertension with cirrhosis may have splenomegaly, ascites, and venous collateral circulation. The ascites increases rapidly and is usually transudate. Bloody ascites is often caused by cancer invading the liver capsule or rupturing into the abdominal cavity, and occasionally by peritoneal metastasis.

Systemic manifestations of malignancy

There are progressive weight loss, fever, loss of appetite, fatigue, malnutrition and cachexia. A small number of patients with liver disease may have special systemic manifestations, called paraneoplastic syndrome, with hypoglycemia and polycythemia being the most common, and other rare ones include hypercalcemia, hyperlipidemia, carcinoid, etc.

Symptoms of metastatic lesions If metastasis occurs to the lungs, bones, chest cavity, etc., corresponding symptoms may occur. Chest cavity metastasis is more common on the right side, and there may be signs of pleural effusion.