When is it appropriate to do palliative resection of liver cancer

For liver cancer patients who are able to undergo radical surgery, radical surgery is undoubtedly the best choice. However, some surgeries cannot completely remove liver cancer, and the remaining liver cancer still exists. Such surgeries are palliative surgeries.

Generally speaking, radical resection should be performed as far as possible for liver cancer patients, but not all patients are suitable for radical resection. In this case, non-surgical methods are usually used, such as hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy, local ablation therapy, radiotherapy, etc. However, sometimes palliative surgical resection can be performed according to the condition, and non-surgical treatment methods such as hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy can be combined after surgery. For example, some patients have large tumors in the liver, and there are also small sub-foci in the liver. The patients' liver cirrhosis is not serious and their liver function is very good. If the large tumor is removed by surgical resection, the remaining small sub-foci in the liver can be treated with hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy after surgery. Since the liver cancer load in the liver is significantly reduced, hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy is easier to control liver cancer; some patients already have cancer thrombus in the portal vein, but if the cancer thrombus is limited, if the liver cancer and the cancer thrombus can be removed together, and then hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy or portal vein chemotherapy is used after surgery, the effect is better than hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy alone.

However, palliative surgery should be used according to the needs of the disease, and the indications for liver cancer resection should not be expanded blindly. In principle, the indications for surgery are still for radical resection.