Liver cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide, and currently available treatments include surgery, radiofrequency ablation, chemotherapy and anti-angioigenic drugs.
Clinical trials are carefully managed studies that can assist doctors in discovering more effective therapies. People living with liver cancer may also benefit from palliative care services to manage pain and other symptoms of their illness.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy uses drugs to target cancer cells and can be administered alone or combined with other treatments. Chemo can shrink tumors and make them easier to remove surgically, while helping prevent future outbreaks or spread.
The type of chemotherapy treatment you undergo depends on both the type of cancer and its stage. Some types can be eradicated through chemotherapy with curative intent; other times, doctors may administer palliative chemotherapy in order to kill off any remaining cancer cells and stop them from growing back (chemotherapy with palliative intent).
Chemotherapy causes your body to create new blood cells to replace those damaged by its drugs, leaving you feeling tired and weak; side effects may include nausea and vomiting; however, certain vitamins or herbal supplements may help alleviate them.
Talk with your doctor about your treatment options. A clinical trial could offer cutting-edge therapy. Ask your physician if such trials are available at your clinic or hospital and if so, inquire as soon as possible – these research studies provide more benefits to some than others – should you decide to participate, they will explain exactly how the trial operates.
Radiotherapy
Radiation therapy uses powerful beams of high energy rays to kill cancer cells and stop their proliferation, as well as reduce symptoms and the chance of it returning. A specialist team comprising a radiation oncologist and medical physicist administers radiation, and will determine the dose and location on your body; you could receive external or internal radiotherapy, along with chemotherapy treatments and surgery procedures.
Your treatment plan will give you the best chance at curing or shrinking cancer while minimizing side effects. Your choice of radiation therapy depends on factors like its type and stage, how healthy your liver is, etc.
Once on the table, a machine will direct beams of radiation at your tumour. You may need five treatments each week (usually Monday to Friday with a break at the weekend). Each session typically lasts 15-30 minutes. Your therapeutic radiographer will discuss any commitments such as work or child care that might make scheduling sessions challenging, and arrange radiotherapy appointments around them as best she can.
Intra-arterial chemotherapy with chemoembolization beads is an effective treatment option for hepatocellular carcinoma. This involves injecting beads containing cancer-fighting medication directly into an artery that supplies the tumor to cut off blood flow to it and stop its expansion.
Targeted cancer drugs
Chemotherapy is a drug treatment designed to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors, enabling surgeons to surgically remove them. Individuals may require chemotherapy alone or in combination with other therapies; chemotherapy can also be used pre-surgery to shrink tumours before surgery as well as post-op to help keep cancer at bay.
Targeted cancer drugs are designed to identify and inhibit the spread of cancer cells with specific molecular targets. They do this by blocking or slowing down certain proteins inside or on the surface of cancer cells, acting like blockers. You may receive them in various forms including tablets you swallow or intravenous therapy (IVT) drips into an arm vein (IVT) or as injections under your skin – depending on your type of cancer, treatment goals and response. You may require these daily for months or even years – this depends on each factor involved as well as response from both parties involved.
Some targeted cancer drugs can cause side effects, including changes to hair and nails and dry skin. Others can make you feel tired or sick. Your doctors will discuss which side effects might impact you and provide advice on how best to cope.
If your doctor thinks you could benefit from targeted cancer drug, they will test a sample of your cancer to ensure it contains the desired molecular target. Unfortunately, not everyone with cancer of similar types will qualify – their cancer cells must possess specific mutations which will respond.
Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy for liver cancer is an innovative form of therapy that employs the body’s natural defense mechanisms against tumors. Although safe and effective for some patients, immunotherapy takes longer than other therapies to show results and can produce side effects like fevers and chills; one sign that immunotherapy has worked is when there is either less tumor growth or no further expansion, as well as changes to blood work results.
Immunotherapy treatments may make you feel like you have flu symptoms, including fevers and chills, fatigue, muscle or joint ache, weight gain from fluid retention and loss of appetite. Over time these symptoms typically fade with treatment; taking Acetaminophen (Tylenol) may help ease them.
Some forms of immunotherapy utilize natural products to stimulate the immune system and kill cancer cells, known as phytocompounds, with anti-tumor and anti-angiogenic activity without disrupting normal cell physiology. Current researchers are looking into combinations of plant-derived natural products to increase efficacy; researchers believe this strategy could increase chemotherapy’s efficacy while decreasing side effects – it holds great promise as an alternative approach to traditional monotherapeutic methods (218).
Advanced liver cancer
Many patients with liver cancer are only identified at an advanced stage, meaning it has already spread beyond the liver to other parts of their bodies. Doctors utilize various treatments in order to control cancer growth and enhance quality of life for these individuals.
Physicians may utilize blood tests to look for proteins produced by cancer cells that can provide insight into whether the cancer will grow quickly and cause serious complications. They may also perform a liver biopsy procedure whereby a healthcare provider inserts a needle through your skin into your liver in order to collect tissue samples which will then be sent off to a laboratory to be tested to identify whether you have hepatocellular carcinoma.
If you have advanced liver cancer, treatment options may include surgery to remove the tumor or even liver transplantation. Your physician will discuss these possibilities with you if they believe these will be best suited for you.
Advanced liver cancer can be treated using targeted cancer drugs and radiation therapy, among other options. Targeted cancer drugs target specific chemicals within cancer cells to inhibit them and cause them to die off, immunotherapy or radioembolization may also help, with intra-arterial chemotherapy with chemoembolization beads for treating hepatocellular carcinoma being particularly useful; during this treatment your team could place beads that hold chemotherapy into a blood vessel leading directly into your liver and add medicine that blocks blood supply to tumors to stop them growing further.
Embolisation
Embolisation is a minimally invasive treatment used to disrupt abnormal clusters of blood vessels (vascular malformations). The process requires inserting a catheter (a thin tube) into an artery in the thigh, then into a hepatic artery in the liver where dye will be injected into your bloodstream to help monitor its path, before blocking blood supply to tumors using special gel that does not harm healthy liver tissue. This helps shrink cancerous tumors while not harming healthy tissue nearby.
Liver cancer metastases typically feed from the hepatic artery, and blocking this blood supply has been shown to both shrink the tumour size and improve survival rates. Furthermore, some studies have demonstrated that embolisation may also help alleviate pain associated with neuroendocrine tumours.
But studies that utilize different treatment regimes and outcome measures are difficult to compare directly; additionally, many tumors in these patients may be hypervascular and thus respond poorly to TAE/TACE treatments. Furthermore, TAE/TACE has not been shown to extend survival among colorectal hepatic metastasis patients and has yet to replace surgery in most cases. It may still prove beneficial as part of locoregional therapies like PEI and thermal ablation approaches.
