Metastatic Liver Cancer | Hepatocellular Chemoembolization

Hepatocellular Chemoembolization

hepatocellular chemoembolization

When Kistan2 asked in her Liver Cancer story about alternative liver cancer treatments, we immediately had to think about hepatocellular chemoembolization.

Immediately, because we went through the same quest when father was diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer. We searched the Internet for any cure, we found a few "promising treatments", but :

What is Hepatocellular Chemoembolization?

Chemoembolization is an innovative treatment for cancers of the liver doing 2 things at the same time:

  1. block the tumors’ blood supply and at the same time
  2. deposit a concentrated form of chemotherapy at the site of the cancer.

A catheter (a thin flexible, spaghetti sized tube) is placed through a tiny hole in the skin and directed through the pathways of the body’s arteries straight into the portion of the liver where the cancer is located.

Chemotherapy and particles which block the blood supply are then infused through this catheter.

Advantages of hepatocellular chemoembolization

Fist and foremost: it is a chemotherapy, so it’s not a guaranteed cure.

It is also used to reduce the size of the tumor to decrease the pain due to the growing liver pushing against the other organs.

The main advantage is that the chemotherapy doesn’t go into the entire bloodstream, so a higher dose can be used without the patient suffering from terrible side-effects if this dose was given with a normal chemo-therapy.

How does that work exactly you say? Well: the liver gets his blood:

Tumors in the liver typically get most of their blood supply from the hepatic artery. So:

In father’s metastatic liver cancer case unfortunately: his liver didn’t have 1 big tumor, but looked like a raisin bread filled with little tumors. Trying hepatocellular chemoembolization would have been a daunting task…

2 Comments

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2 Responses to “Hepatocellular Chemoembolization”

  1. Metastatic liver cancer » Metastatic liver cancer prognosis on February 6th, 2009 3:11 pm

    [...] I ended up again looking for new conventional cancer treatments like Hepatocellular Chemoembolization or Laser treatment for liver cancer and virtual [...]

     
  2. Metastatic liver cancer » Cancer treatment options on November 12th, 2008 2:05 pm

    [...] Hepatocellular Chemoembolization  [...]

     

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