How is liver cancer treated?

There are a number of ways to treat liver cancer. Tomoaki Kato, MD, discusses the effectiveness of local or regional radiation for treating liver cancer.

Transcript

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Other very effective liver cancer treatments are so-called local regional therapy to treat the cancer directly

00:07

by the radiology approach. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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So the liver cancer can be treated in surgically or medically. I'll talk about more surgical side of the treatment,

00:23

as the two options of surgical treatment are hepatic resection to cut the part of the liver out

00:30

to take the tumor out, and then the other one is the liver transplantation. This is to change the entire liver.

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So there are some other medical treatment for liver cancer. One is to use drug, which is not necessarily

00:44

a mainstay for most common type of liver cancer. But some certain type of liver cancer, chemotherapy

00:51

can be very effective, too. Other very effective liver cancer treatments are so-called local regional therapy

01:00

to treat the cancer directly by the radiology approach. One is called chemoembolization.

01:07

That is to go through the blood vessel to put the chemo material and close the artery, the blood supply to the liver tumor, to cause the necrosis of the liver

01:17

cancer. And the other one is radiofrequency ablation, is to put the needle directly to the tumor and then burn it.