Selection of treatment methods for different stages of liver cancer

  Current status of liver cancer treatment: The treatment effect of liver cancer has been significantly improved compared with that of 20 years ago, making liver cancer relatively curable from an incurable disease. At present, the general treatment concept of liver cancer is: early stage liver cancer is mainly treated by surgical resection and local ablation, while middle and late stage liver cancer is mainly treated by interventional therapy, which is a combination of local ablation, targeted therapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy and other multidisciplinary treatments, and different treatment means are used for different stages of liver cancer.  1. Early stage liver cancer: as long as the general health condition allows, surgery should be adopted as the first time. Some patients have a wrong view that liver cancer and other tumors cannot be touched, otherwise they will grow faster, or which patient is afraid of surgery because of the poor effect of surgery. As long as liver cancer is in early stage and there is no serious disease such as cardiovascular disease, it should be treated by surgery as much as possible. On the contrary, if the patient is not suitable for surgery but forcibly operated, it will not only fail to achieve therapeutic effect but also reduce the quality of life.  2. Middle and late stage liver cancer that cannot be operated: if liver function allows and there is no gastrointestinal bleeding, intractable ascites, hepatic encephalopathy, infection, etc., interventional treatment can be considered. Meanwhile, local ablation therapy, targeted therapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy should be applied in combination.  3. End-stage liver cancer: For patients with end-stage liver cancer, supportive therapy should be the main treatment to reduce the occurrence of complications.