For ordinary liver cancer patients, the lack of knowledge about liver cancer is an important cause of treatment confusion.
There is a huge difference in clinical treatment effect whether a liver cancer is early, middle or late stage.
The 5-year survival rate of early stage liver cancer can reach 50-70%, and some patients can survive for more than 10 or even 20 years.
However, most patients and family members are not clear about what kind of liver cancer is early or late stage, and even some professional physicians may be ambiguous about this concept. Especially for giant liver cancer, most people take it for granted that it must be advanced stage and give up the most effective surgical treatment and turn to conservative treatment.
Here, I will give a few examples to clarify this concept.
1. a giant hepatocellular carcinoma of the right liver with a diameter of 20 cm. this tumor has no vascular invasion and is staged as early stage, which should be treated by active surgery.
The patient did not require blood transfusion for surgery and recovered well after surgery.
Barcelona Clinical Liver Cancer Subgroup Protocol (BCLC)
HCC
Staging 0
Child;
PST0
Staging A-C
Okuda1-2;
Child A-B;
PS 0-2
Staging D
Okuda3
Child C
PS >2
Very early stage 0
Solitary <2cm< font="">carcinoma in situ
Early stage A
Single or multiple tumors <3cm< font="">
Number ≤3
PST 0
Intermediate stage B
Multiple nodules
PST 0
Late stage C
portal infiltration
N1, M1
PST1-2
End-stage D
solitary
portal pressure
Bilirubin
normal
Elevated →
Associated disease
Surgical resection
No
Yes
Liver transplantation
PEI/RF
Chemoembolization
New drug*
Curative treatment (30%)
5-year survival rate 50% to 70%
Randomized controlled trials 30%
3-year survival rate 20% to 40%
Symptomatic supportive care 30%