The Livers Function and Treatment of Metastatic Liver Cancer
Before we discuss metastatic liver cancer let’s have a look at the function of the liver. The liver is a brown solid organ situated in the upper right abdomen, tucked behind the ribs. Basically it will destroy, transform and eliminate many substances in the body, especially bilirubin. It produces many things and receives blood from the hepatic artery and especially the portal vein. In general the prognosis of liver cancer is pretty bad considering that the primary liver tumors are very aggressive from the start. If it’s already in advanced stages then most likely it has become metastatic liver cancer.
Cancer is an aggressive uncontrolled proliferation, a group of malignant cells, which are arranged to form one or more tumors and tend to invade other healthy tissue spreading through the body via blood or lymphatic metastasis forming.
The liver can be affected by cancer in two ways:
• Tumors that originate in the liver (primary liver cancer)
• Tumors from other organs with metastatic cancers, colon cancer, colorectal cancer or breast cancer.
The liver is one of the organs most affected by metastasis in other locations. This fact, which can occur in almost any organ in the body, is particularly important in the case of liver metastasis, this being three times more common than primary tumors.
Initially the symptoms are the same regardless of tumor type. Ultrasound is most used for the initial study of the liver and therefore tends to be the test that detects the tumors. Generally these tumors are diagnosed by alterations in the analysis or review or in a tumor and treated either cirrhosis or hepatitis. Routine physical examinations are very important for everyone, because until the tumors reach a considerable size, most people do not begin to display any of the symptoms. It is for this reason that in many cases when people are diagnosed with cancer, they are unfortunately already in a state of metastasis (becoming much more difficult to treat) and in thousands of cases without hope of a cure. To diagnose liver cancer you need to check your patient and family history of chronic hepatitis or cirrhosis, and other symptoms that may help the diagnosis.
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The following signs may indicate that the cancer has spread to the liver:
- An irregular enlargement of the lower edge of the liver
- A yellowish tint to the eyes and skin
- Breast lumps
- Blood in the rectum
- Feeling of fullness when eating little
- Loss of appetite and weight
- Persistent pain in the abdomen
In general the best treatment is surgical excision. This requires that the lesion or lesions are in a portion of the liver to remove them all without sacrificing too much liver as to prevent survival. Due to the regenerative capacity of the liver it’s possible to have the affected part removed combined with a donation of a piece of a healthy liver from a living donor who would continue to live with the remnants of his liver. Also it can be treated with chemotherapy that has been shown to increase survival in patients with metastatic liver cancer.
