Hepatocellular carcinoma (patient information)
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What is Hepatocellular carcinoma
The liver is the largest internal organ which lies under the right side of your ribcage just beneath your right lung. It is a very important organ for digestion and metabolism. Primary liver cancer starts in the liver. Metastatic liver cancer starts somewhere else and spreads to your liver. It is hard to detect hepatocellular carcinoma in it's early stages. Frequent symptoms include pain and lump in the right abdomen, yellowing of the eyes and skin, marasmus and fatigue. Possible treatments include surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Prognosis is not good for most hepatocellular carcinoma patients.
How do I know if I have Hepatocellular carcinoma and what are the symptoms of Hepatocellular carcinoma?
In it's earliest stages hepatocellular carcinoma does not cause any symptoms. When the tumors grow larger, people may notice one or more of the following symptoms:
- Abdominal pain and vague abdominal fullness: At first the location of the abdominal pain you are experiencing may be isolated on the upper-right part of your abdomen. It is usually relatively mild pain or no pain at all that is present with this life-threatening condition. With the development of the cancer, abdominal pain is usually persistent.
- Abdominal lump: People can not find any lump at the beginning of the disease. When the tumor begins to enlarge, the lump may be obvious in the abdominal region.
- Jaundice and itching: This is caused by hepatocellular necrosis and obstruction of bile in the bile ducts.
- Nausea and vomiting: Hepatocellular carcinoma disturbs the normal functions of digestion.
- Vomiting blood: This symptom is attributed to many factors such dysfunction of the liver and spleen.
- Loss of appetite
- General decline in health
- Weakness or fatigue
- Fever
Infections or other health problems may also cause these symptoms. Only a doctor can tell for sure. A person with any of these symptoms should tell his/her doctor so that problems can be diagnosed and treated as early as possible.
Who is at risk for Hepatocellular carcinoma?
There are some factors that may increase your risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma. These risk factors include:
- Chronic viral hepatitis
- Cirrhosis
- Inherited metabolic diseases such as hemochromatosis, tyrosinemia, alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency, porphyria cutanea tarda, glycogen storage diseases, and Wilson disease.
- Diabetes Mellitus
- Aflatoxins
- Anabolic steroids
- Arsenic
- Vinyl chloride and thorium dioxide
- Obesity
How to know you have Hepatocellular carcinoma?
It is hard to diagnose hepatocellular carcinoma in its early stages. Other problems can also cause the same symptoms such as stomach discomfort, gallbladder diseases and pancretic diseases. So, if you have those symptoms, you had better go to see your doctor to do some tests. They include lab tests and image tests.
- AFP test: This is a blood test. AFP(alpha-fetoprotein) can be found in the blood of unborn babies, but it disappears shortly after birth. When the level of AFP is higher than normal, it suggests that the patient may be hepatocellular carcinoma. Detecting AFP can be used to look for early tumors in people with high risk for hepatocellular carcinoma.
- Ultrasound: This test is used to find tumors in the liver by ultrasound. Tumor tissue may produce different echo from normal tissue. So different echo patterns can help tell whether there is a tumor and some details such as the size, boundary and so on .
- Computed tomography (CT) scan and biopsy: CT scans are often used to diagnose hepatocellalar carcinoma. It can confirm the location of the cancer and show the organs near the tumor, as well as lymph nodes and distant organs where the cancer might have spread. These are helpful in staging the cancer and in determining whether surgery is a good treatment option. And CT scans can also be used to guide biopsy and a biopsy sample is then removed and looked at under a microscope by the pathologists.
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): An MRI uses magnetic fields but which is a different imaging type from computed tomography (CT) to produce detailed images of the body. MRI scans are very helpful in looking at hepatocellular carcinoma. Sometimes they can contradistinction a benign tumor from a cancerous one. Like computed tomography (CT), a contrast agent may be injected into a patient’s vein to create a better picture. MRI scan takes longer time than CT scan.
- Laparoscopy and biopsy: During this test, a thin, lighted is put in through a small cut in abdomen to look at the liver and other organs. The test can help the doctor in diagnosis or treatments. Also through this tube , the doctor can use small probes to take out tissue samples to be checked under the microscope by pathologists.
When to seek urgent medical care
Call your health care provider if symptoms of hepatocellular carcinoma develop. If one emerges the following symptoms, seeking urgent medical care as soon as possible:
- Sudden severe abdominal pain and decreasing of blood pressure: The reason of a person with hepatocellular carcinoma appears sudden severe abdominal pain is sometimes because of rupture of carcinoma. This is the results of cancer developing very fast. Sometimes when the carcinoma invades main vessle and results huge hemorrhage into the peritoneal cavity, the patients may feel sudden abdominal pain.
- Vomiting a lot of blood: This is the result of mulitiple reasons such as disfunction of liver to synthetic blood coagulation factors and esophago-gastric fundus vein rupture. An abundant of blood loss may lead to shock and death.