Liver Cancer Treatment - Anti Leukemia

Hepatocellular carcinoma is a malignant tumor, if diagnosed in time, the patient has a great chance of cure or prolongation of survival, the survival rate of early primary liver cancer is 31%, and the survival rate of localized spread And spread to the lymph node by 11%, and liver cancer with a distant spread by 3%, and the faster Liver cancer treatment, the greater the possibility of recovery, as liver cancer arises when the growth of healthy cells changes and grows out of control, to form a mass called a tumor in the liver. Cancer that starts in the liver is called primary liver cancer. Cancer that grows in other parts of the body but spreads to the liver is called metastatic liver cancer. Several factors can stimulate the irregular growth of cells in the liver, which in turn causes the occurrence of cancer.

Surgical Liver cancer treatment

Liver cancer is one of the most difficult tumors to detect at an early stage, as most cases are diagnosed by:

Surgical removal of the tumor from the liver “hepatic resection”:

The tumor is removed from the liver in addition to the surrounding tissues to ensure that there are no cancerous cells that may regrow the tumor after surgery.
This procedure represents a good chance of recovery, in the case of a single tumor less than 5 cm in size or even 3 tumor foci not exceeding 3 cm in size.

Liver Transplantation:

This procedure may be necessary for the advanced stages of the disease where cirrhosis occurs, and the liver is unable to carry out its functions with the spread of the tumor and the possibility of its spread throughout the body
Certainly, this type of surgery is very difficult to perform because of the difficulties of transplanting organs from another person “recently deceased or alive” the chances of rejection of the body receiving the new organ, and the patient’s use of immunosuppressant for long periods after surgery.
Immunosuppressant are used because the immune system considers transplanted organs foreign to the body and attacks them and leading to damage.
Medications that suppress the work of the immune system lead to many side effects such as immune weakness and an increased risk of exposure to infectious and inflammatory diseases, as well as an increased risk of developing many other cancers.

Liver surgeries are considered more dangerous and represent a difficulty for the surgeon and require special experience and skills, due to the spread of blood vessels and the richness of liver tissue in blood, as it contains about 30% of the total blood volume of the body, and therefore the chances of bleeding are high, especially with the low efficiency of the liver that is made of materials that help to clot and prevent bleeding.

However, only 10-15% of patients are suitable for surgical operations, due to the discovery of the disease often in an advanced stage and poor liver and kidney function, which represents an obstacle to surgery and anesthesia. New growth of liver cancer may occur in about 50% of cases after surgery.

External beam radiotherapy for Liver cancer treatment

This type of treatment focuses on radiation from outside the body on tumor tissue.
This can sometimes be used to shrink liver tumors to relieve symptoms such as pain, but it is not used in cases such as arterial embolization or local resection
If it is used in small doses due to the sensitivity of normal liver tissues and the ease of their destruction by radiation.

Interventional radiology for Liver cancer treatment (treatment without surgery)

Before we talk about this modern technology, you must first know the nature of the unique blood food of the liver:

The liver is different from most of the body’s organs in that blood reaches through one source.
Oxygenated blood reaches the liver through two sources: the hepatic artery and the portal vein.
Then the blood laden with carbon dioxide exits the liver through the hepatic vein.

Embolization therapy is based on this concept:

Where the interventional radiologist inserts a precise arterial catheter into the source that delivers blood to the tumor cells and injects a substance to block this source.
Thus, the cancerous cells that feed from this artery die, while the rest of the liver tissues reach the naturally oxygenated blood through the hepatic portal vein.

This treatment represents a good option for patients who are not suitable for surgery and local excision and with relatively large tumors greater than 5 cm. The patient does not need to stay in the hospital and is discharged on the same day.

Types of embolization for the treatment of liver cancer

Arterial embolization

The interventional radiologist inserts a fine catheter from the femoral artery and ascends inside the artery until it reaches the hepatic artery.
Follow-up on the progress of the catheter using a CT scan with a dye that visualizes the blood vessels with high accuracy.
Then he injects small particles to block the artery feeding the tumor.

Arterial embolization with local chemotherapy

This technology represents a new revolution in the treatment of tumors, where the interventional radiologist injects the chemotherapy drug against the cancer cells locally in the place of the tumor only (without intravenous injection of the whole body, which avoids the many side effects of chemotherapy) and then follows it by embolizing the artery feeding the tumor.

Arterial embolization with local radiotherapy “Radio embolization”

With the same procedure followed with arterial embolization with local chemotherapy with the use of radiotherapy with specific radiation frequencies, its action is limited to the location of the tumor only without affecting the rest of the body’s systems.

Arterial embolization and topical treatment are among the modern safe treatment methods with no serious side effects, but minor effects may occur such as stomach pain, hepatitis or gallbladder, clots in the major arteries of the liver, or infection. The appearance of these complications depends on the experience and skill of the interventional radiologist.

General chemotherapy for Liver cancer treatment

Chemotherapy is administered by intravenous injection or by mouth, “causing numerous and dangerous side effects and complications on all organs of the body due to its ability to destroy tissues, and therefore it was replaced by local injections at the site of the tumor, specifically by catheterization of interventional radiotherapy and arterial embolization.

Tumor ablation

Excision or removal of the tumor without surgery is one of the operations of the interventional radiologist, in which the cancer cells are destroyed locally without removing the tumor, and it is done by inserting a needle or a small medical catheter from the anterior abdominal wall until it reaches the location of the tumor accurately by using sound waves or CT scan to accurately determine the location and dimensions of the tumor. The patient does not need to stay in the hospital afterward and is discharged on the same day.

The best results can be obtained using this technique if the tumor is no more than 3 cm in size, and it may be used with other techniques in larger tumors.

Methods used to kill tumor cells inside the liver vary, including:

Radiofrequency ablation.
Microwave thermotherapy.
Ablation using ethanol.
Cryotherapy.

Local resection is better than surgical treatment in terms of a lower rate of complications, and bleeding, lower death rate resulting from complications of surgical treatment, lower recovery time after treatment, and lower hospital stay, which reduces side effects and infection.

Cryotherapy for Liver cancer treatment

Cryotherapy is a treatment technique that exposes cells to a severe degree of cooling or freezing, which leads to cell death due to their intolerance to cooling conditions.
Cooling cauterizes and kills cells.
Cryotherapy for liver cancer is performed in a minimally invasive procedure, during which the surgeon inserts a cryogenic device into the tumor area with the help of ultrasound and then injects liquid nitrogen directly into the tumor.
The temperature of liquid nitrogen is -198 degrees Celsius, and the extreme freezing point when tumor cells are exposed to it kills these cells.

microwave thermotherapy

In microwave thermotherapy, radio waves are used to heat cancer cells to a point that leads to their death.
Microwave thermotherapy has properties that lead to heating water to a high temperature inside the cells, which causes the death of these cells.
Cancer cells are heated by inserting a needle through the abdomen into the tumor area with the help of ultrasound to see the location of the tumor.
This needle is then connected to an electric current to heat the cells.

Ethanol ablation

In this process, 100% pure alcohol is injected directly into the tumor using a needle through the skin or during surgery.
Injecting pure alcohol into cells causes them to die.

Immunotherapy for the treatment of liver cancer

Immunotherapy is a treatment method based on stimulating the body’s immune system against the tumor so that the immune cells attack the tumor and kill the cancer cells.
The immune system does not attack tumor cells in normal conditions because cancer cells make proteins that mislead the immune system about them.
In immunotherapy, special drugs disable this feature on tumor cells, which leads to the activation of the immune system response.

Diagnosis of liver cancer

It is not widely practiced for all patients to undergo radiographic examinations for the early detection of primary liver cancer, but it is possible to perform these examinations for people who have a high risk of infection, and despite this, research has not been able to determine if radiography is appropriate and effective for all patients.

To diagnose liver cancer, the presence of other diseases that may have similar symptoms must first be ruled out.

Other additional examinations include:

Blood tests

These tests measure tumor markers, which are substances that rise in the blood when you have liver cancer, and can help determine the diagnosis.
Liver cancer secretes a substance called Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP – Alpha-fetoprotein), which is generally found in fetuses and disappears at birth.

Ultrasound examination

It is generally the first examination performed; This is because it can detect tumors as large as 1 centimeter.

Computed tomography (CT) and MRI – Magnetic resonance imaging

These two tests can detect existing tumors and help classify and grade them, but they often give false positive results.

Biopsy

It is the only examination that distinguishes between a benign tumor and a malignant one.

Laparoscopy

It is an effective examination to detect small tumors, determine the circumference of cirrhosis in the liver, take a sample for biopsy, and so on.