How to prevent cancer spread after liver cancer surgery What you need to know to prevent liver cancer spread after surgery

The main measure to prevent the spread of liver cancer is to avoid excessive turning and squeezing of the tumor. Cutting the liver ligaments and freeing the liver often requires squeezing the tumor, which is easy to cause liver cancer to spread, especially when the tumor is large and difficult to expose during surgery.

Liver cancer patients need good care after surgery, because surgery does not mean that the disease is cured. If the care is not good, the cancer cells are likely to spread. This is also the terrible thing about liver cancer. The most important thing for liver cancer patients after surgery is to prevent the spread of cancer.

Methods for liver cancer patients to prevent cancer from spreading after surgery are as follows:

Intrahepatic recurrence and metastasis to the lungs and other parts after liver cancer resection are mostly caused by the cancer thrombi in the portal vein and hepatic vein being squeezed and dislodged during the process of freeing and cutting during liver surgery and then spreading through the blood. Multi-center liver cancer is also possible, but it is relatively rare. The vast majority of liver cancer recurrences after resection are residual cancer foci, such as small satellite nodules of cancer and intrahepatic spread of the portal vein system.

The main measure to prevent the spread of liver cancer is to avoid excessive turning and squeezing of the tumor. Cutting the liver ligaments and freeing the liver often requires squeezing the tumor, especially when the tumor is large and surgical exposure is difficult, which can easily cause liver cancer to spread. In addition, when the liver is severed, finger pressure or blunt dissection liver resection are commonly used. Both can cause the cancer foci in the blood vessels to fall off and spread. In this regard, the hepatic blood vessels and hepatic veins (second hepatic portal) can be ligated in advance at the portal vein (second portal vein), liver forceps and cystic bands can be used to stop bleeding, or percutaneous portal vein embolization (pVE) can be performed 2 weeks before surgery and absorbable starch microspheres can be injected into the portal vein branch that leads to the tumor during surgery, all of which can reduce the spread of liver cancer in the liver.

Lung metastasis and systemic metastasis after liver cancer surgery are mostly caused by the shedding of cancer cells in the hepatic vein branches during surgery. Liver cancer cells invade the hepatic vein branches, block the blood vessel cavity, and extend toward the inferior vena cava (if this phenomenon is found during surgery, the prognosis is very poor). Lung metastasis may occur early after surgery. Early blocking of the venous return of cancer during surgery may help with lung and systemic metastasis, but it is often difficult to do technically, especially for tumors in the right liver, which often push the right hepatic vein to the back and are not easy to expose, so the hepatic vein can only be cut during tumor removal.

What patients with liver cancer fear most is the spread of cancer. Once cancer cells spread, it means that life is about to end. Therefore, prevention and care must be done after surgery. Experts emphasize that even after being discharged from the hospital, patients with liver cancer should go to the hospital for a follow-up check-up every once in a while. If problems are found, timely treatment measures should be taken to prolong the patient's life.