What are the effective treatments for liver cancer? Here are some of the best liver cancer treatments

Liver cancer is a very common disease nowadays. This disease has a great impact on the patients' lives. With the continuous changes in people's lives, the number of people suffering from this disease is getting wider and wider. Therefore, many people in the clinic pay much attention to how to treat liver cancer. So what is the treatment method for this disease? The following is a detailed introduction to this issue. I hope it can be helpful to everyone.

Surgery

Surgery is the first choice for liver cancer treatment, which can achieve the goal of cure by completely removing tumor tissue. Modern liver surgery technology is becoming more and more advanced, and tumor size is not the key factor restricting surgery. Whether it can be removed and the efficacy of resection are not only related to the size and number of tumors, but also closely related to liver function, degree of cirrhosis, tumor location, tumor boundary, the presence or absence of complete capsule and venous tumor thrombus. Patients who undergo surgical resection are generally required to have good general condition, that is, no organic lesions of important organs such as heart, lungs, kidneys, normal or near-normal liver function, and specific objective liver function reserve assessment indicators, such as jaundice level, albumin level, indocyanine green retention rate, etc. At the same time, there are no extrahepatic tumor metastases, and the tumor location is limited, rather than multiple or diffuse distribution. The one-year survival rate after surgical resection of early liver cancer is more than 80%, and the five-year survival rate is more than 50%. If combined with comprehensive treatment after surgery, better results can be achieved.

In addition to liver resection, surgical treatment can also choose liver transplantation, especially for patients with small liver cancer with cirrhosis and liver decompensation, liver transplantation is the best choice. At present, about 4,000 liver transplants are performed in my country each year, of which the proportion of liver cancer patients is as high as 40%. There are many standards for the indications of liver transplantation for liver cancer, mainly focusing on the size, number, vascular invasion and lymph node metastasis of the tumor. In general, these standards are relatively consistent in terms of the requirements for no large blood vessel invasion, lymph node metastasis and extrahepatic metastasis, but the requirements for the size and number of tumors are not the same. Compared with the international liver transplantation standards for liver cancer, my country's standards have expanded the scope of indications for liver transplantation for liver cancer. Although liver cancer patients who exceed the standards may eventually relapse and metastasize after receiving liver transplantation, their quality of life and survival time are significantly better than other treatment methods. Therefore, a comprehensive judgment should be made based on the demand ratio of donors and recipients to select indications.

Other treatments

It includes radiofrequency ablation, microwave ablation, high-intensity focused ultrasound, intra-arterial chemoembolization, alcohol injection, cryotherapy, radiotherapy, molecular targeted therapy, immunotherapy and traditional Chinese medicine treatment, etc., and is mainly used for patients who cannot undergo surgical treatment for various reasons.

Among them, the principle of radiofrequency ablation or microwave ablation for liver cancer is to use the thermal effect of microwaves or radio frequencies to heat the liver tissue through the oscillation of polar molecules in the tissue, especially water molecules, thereby causing thermal coagulation in the target area. In layman's terms, it burns the tumor to death, which can achieve a radical cure comparable to liver cancer resection and liver transplantation. It is suitable for patients with smaller single liver cancers that are far away from important blood vessels, liver cancer recurrence after surgical resection, or liver cancer patients with poor liver function reserve who cannot tolerate surgical resection.

Hepatic artery interventional chemoembolization is to reach the hepatic artery through arterial catheterization and inject embolic agents or anticancer drugs. It is often used for patients with advanced liver cancer who cannot undergo surgery to control the disease and prolong survival. For those who are not suitable for hepatic artery interventional treatment and some patients after palliative surgery, combined or sequential chemotherapy can be used, but liver cancer is not well responsive to chemotherapy and often does not achieve good therapeutic effects.

Sorafenib, a new molecular targeted drug that has been introduced in recent years, can delay tumor progression and prolong survival to a certain extent. The results of clinical trials at home and abroad show that sorafenib can prolong patient survival by 2-3 months and delay disease development by 73%. However, the drug is relatively expensive and may be accompanied by more serious adverse reactions such as diarrhea, rash, hypertension, hand-foot syndrome, etc. The effect needs further evaluation.

After reading the above introduction, I believe everyone has a certain understanding of the treatment methods of this disease. It should be clear that for a disease like liver cancer that is highly harmful and has a high incidence rate, only treatment can effectively control the development of the disease. However, there are many methods for treating liver cancer, and different liver cancer patients have different body systems, so the treatment methods they choose are also different. Therefore, liver cancer patients must strictly follow the doctor's advice and actively cooperate with the treatment!