Liver cancer early screening must be done, don’t wait until you feel uncomfortable to go for a check-up

When you find yourself having uncomfortable symptoms in your liver area, it is often the late stage of liver cancer. There is no way to treat it at this point. Liver cancer must be discovered in its early stages to be treated. In order to detect early liver cancer, early screening is essential. Here we will take you to learn more about the relevant common sense of early screening for liver cancer.

Let us first tell you who is more likely to develop liver cancer in life. The high-risk groups for liver cancer are mainly:

1. Patients with chronic hepatitis B.

2. Patients with chronic hepatitis C.

3. Patients with various liver cirrhosis, especially men over 55 years old or those with obesity, diabetes, hypothyroidism, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or abnormal liver function.

4. People who consume aflatoxin for a long time.

The two most common examination items for early screening of liver cancer are serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and liver B-ultrasound. Since the 1980s, serum alpha-fetoprotein examination has been used for screening of liver cancer in routine physical examinations. It has helped many patients detect liver cancer at an early stage and saved their lives. It has also greatly improved the surgical cure rate of liver cancer in our country.

About 70% of patients with early liver cancer will have elevated alpha-fetoprotein levels. The remaining patients with early liver cancer will not have very high alpha-fetoprotein levels. If you check your blood alpha-fetoprotein and find that the level is higher than 20ng/ml, you should suspect liver cancer (but it does not mean that you will definitely have liver cancer). However, if it is lower than 20ng/ml, it does not necessarily mean that you do not have liver cancer.

As a screening indicator, alpha-fetoprotein should be checked together with liver B-ultrasound. If the patient's alpha-fetoprotein value is elevated and a small mass is found in the liver after B-ultrasound, it can be basically confirmed that the patient has liver cancer. After the screening is completed, the next step is to confirm the diagnosis.

This is the end of the introduction to common knowledge about early screening of liver cancer. Now we know that there are two tests we need to do to detect liver cancer in the early stages, namely serum alpha-fetoprotein and liver B-ultrasound. I hope everyone will remember to do these two tests on time to avoid detecting liver cancer in the late stages.