Is interventional treatment for liver cancer useful? What is the mechanism of action of interventional treatment for liver cancer?

After the interventional therapy accurately locates the blood supply artery of the liver cancer tissue, the artery is embolized to induce ischemic death of the cancer tissue and play an anti-liver cancer role. The principle of interventional therapy for tumors is "encirclement and suppression". It is equivalent to cutting off all the necessary substances for the tumor to grow until the tumor starves to death. Before chemotherapy embolization, chemotherapy drugs should be injected into the tumor blood supply artery, and high-concentration chemotherapy drugs should be infused into the local tumor.

First of all, we need to know what interventional therapy is. At present, the standard for interventional therapy of liver cancer is usually called TACE. TACE is a modern anti-liver cancer treatment method based on the theory of tumor starvation therapy. This treatment method can induce ischemic death of tumor tissue or inhibit the growth of tumor tissue by destroying tumor blood vessels or inhibiting the growth of tumor blood vessels.

So far, interventional therapy is an ideal treatment method. However, the currently used TACE cannot completely kill liver cancer cells, so it is not a cure for liver cancer. Although interventional therapy can reduce the volume of primary liver cancer and improve the patient's condition in the short term, lung metastasis and recurrence of liver cancer after interventional therapy will greatly affect the further treatment of the disease, thereby greatly affecting the patient's survival rate.

Interventional therapy can block the main blood supply artery of liver cancer, but it cannot completely cut off the blood supply. In other words, if the road is blocked, it can also take other roads. Studies have shown that TACE can promote angiogenesis in residual tissues, that is, residual cancer has the ability to break out again. In addition, interventional therapy can also induce the adaptation and further development of residual cancer cells, which is characterized by enhanced invasiveness of cancer cells and distant metastasis of residual cancer cells. Cancer cells are far less simple than we think, and they can evolve in the struggle.

Hypoxia is the main principle of interventional therapy. It exerts survival pressure on cancer cells, but it can also stimulate tumor cells to enhance their invasive ability through various mechanisms, and promote tumor cells to survive and metastasize to distant sites in a hypoxic environment. Hypoxia is also one of the important factors that promote the progression of malignant tumors. In addition, chemotherapy drugs can also enhance the movement and invasion of remaining cancer cells.

Interventional therapy plays an important role in the treatment of liver cancer. It has a long history and a large number of cases. In recent years, a large number of studies on the efficacy of interventional therapy have also been controversial. Although the clinical application situation is very complicated, we have to admit that interventional therapy has become the preferred auxiliary treatment method. At the same time, interventional therapy is also an auxiliary means of liver cancer treatment. With the advancement of related technologies, the application of TACE in the early and mid-stage clinical treatment of liver cancer is also expanding.