What are the efficacy indicators for liver cancer

Generally, all liver cancer patients are concerned about whether they can be cured, or what kind of effect they can achieve after surgery or drug treatment. There are two indicators for judging the efficacy of liver cancer treatment, namely liver cancer survival index and tumor response index.

Liver cancer survival indicators

Survival indicators included overall survival and disease-free survival.

The overall survival rate refers to the length of time a patient survives or the percentage of patients who survive within a specific period of time. Regardless of whether the patient has a tumor or not, as long as he or she is alive, the survival period or survival rate is calculated.

The disease-free survival rate refers to the survival rate of liver cancer patients in a tumor-free state after surgical resection or in a specific period of time.

Tumor response markers

Tumor response indicators are mainly used to evaluate the efficacy of non-surgical resection methods. For example, after hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy, whether the tumor shrinks or disappears completely is called complete remission. If the maximum diameter of the tumor shrinks by more than 30%, it is called partial remission. If the maximum diameter of the tumor shrinks by no more than 30% and increases by no more than 20%, it is called stable. If it increases by more than 20% or new lesions appear, it is called disease progression.

As for the treatment effect of liver cancer, it is currently believed that the most important efficacy indicator is the patient's overall survival, and whether the tumor shrinks is a secondary indicator. This is because even if the patient's tumor does not shrink, if it is in a stable state, the patient may still survive for a long time, and such treatment is still effective; on the contrary, even if the tumor is shrunk after some intense anti-tumor treatment, but soon the tumor metastasizes to multiple parts of the body or the toxic reaction of the treatment causes the failure of important organs, then such treatment is ineffective and undesirable.