Precautions for liver cancer treatment in the elderly

Elderly patients with liver cancer should be treated specially due to their physical characteristics compared to young patients, and attention should be paid during treatment.

Due to the improvement of living standards, the life expectancy of Chinese residents has greatly increased compared with the past, and the aging phenomenon is serious. Therefore, elderly liver cancer patients are more common than in the past. There is a difference in the treatment of elderly liver cancer patients and young people.

Most elderly liver cancer patients have slow tumor development and are easy to control with treatment. In terms of body function, the compensatory functions of the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys of the elderly are relatively poor. Therefore, when treating elderly liver cancer patients, we must first pay attention to the relatively low compensatory functions of important organs of the body and the poor tolerance to the toxic reactions of various anti-tumor treatments. This requires that the dose and intensity of anti-tumor treatments should be relatively moderate, and overtreatment should be avoided.

Before elderly patients with liver cancer undergo surgical resection, their heart, lung, and kidney functions should be fully evaluated. Surgical resection should be based on local resection. If the tumor is small, minimally invasive treatments that cause less damage to the body and organ functions should be chosen first, such as radiofrequency ablation and intratumoral anhydrous ethanol injection.

When patients with liver cancer that cannot be surgically removed undergo hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy, the dosage of chemotherapy drugs should be appropriately reduced. If repeated treatment is required, the interval between two treatments should be appropriately extended. Immunomodulators should also be appropriately used, or combined with traditional Chinese medicine treatment.