Liver Cancer; Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, & Treatment Options

Surveillance, screening, and prevention

As we have mentioned, hepatocellular carcinoma is a silent disease. The signs and symptoms above may not be found in a patient with early disease. When they finally appear, you could have advanced cancer. Thus, opting for surveillance is much more important instead of waiting for the symptoms to show up.

When adequately identified at an early stage, there is no need for aggressive interventions. There’s a higher chance of improvement, and therapy is easier to handle. Thus, an active screening program is appropriate if you’re at risk of developing this disease. According to studies, you could have twice the survival rate if liver cancer is detected through surveillance and screening of high-risk patients

Keep in mind that screening for liver cancer follows a series of criteria. Thus, you should talk to your doctor if you’re unsure about this.

• • Target population: Who should get screened for liver cancer? Patients with several of the risk factors listed above are at a higher risk for this type of cancer. The most common cause is hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. Patients with cirrhosis should also get screened, even if they don’t have any other risk factor.
  • Screening tests: What tests will be used to screen liver cancer? Remember that we’re talking about screening, not ruling out a suspicious case. The difference is that screening is made on a healthy patient who wants to check up just in case. Ultrasound scans are probably the most commonly used imaging tests to detect liver cancer. However, it can be challenging to differentiate a tumor in case of cirrhosis. Thus, it can be combined with the measure of a tumor marker known as alfa-fetoprotein. More recently, another tumor marker known as DCP (des-gamma-carboxy prothrombin) has been used in Japan to detect liver cancer.