Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most serious diseases in China, with the second highest mortality rate among malignancies.
The factors that affect the survival of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma are:
- The early diagnosis rate is low, with only 20%-25% of outpatients being in the early stage and suitable for surgery;
- High recurrence rate after surgery for hepatocellular carcinoma, with a recurrence rate of about 60%-70% after radical hepatectomy.
In addition, most liver cancers in China develop from hepatitis B. Therefore, patients with hepatocellular carcinoma themselves have a combination of hepatitis B and cirrhosis, so treatment needs to be individualized and comprehensive, taking into account the patient’s liver function and viral replication.
What is multidisciplinary treatment?
What is multidisciplinary therapy?
Multidisciplinary treatment (MDT), also known as multidisciplinary collaboration, is a clinical treatment model in which specialists from two or more related disciplines (usually including multiple disciplines) form a relatively fixed group of experts who meet at regular, scheduled, and site-specific meetings to provide advice on the treatment of an organ or systemic disease.
The goal of integrated multidisciplinary treatment is to provide patients with an individualized treatment plan based on multidisciplinary discussions that is most effective, with minimal side effects and best life treatment.
Integrated multidisciplinary treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma and how to do it effectively?
Multidisciplinary collaboration is the optimal treatment model for liver cancer as well as other malignancies. The following conditions and settings are required for the development of multidisciplinary integrated treatment:
- To develop a good multidisciplinary integrated treatment team, it requires a longer period of time between team members;
- In clinical practice, physicians need to have knowledge of diseases outside their own specialty and in related specialties.
Multidisciplinary collaboration can take many practice forms. For example, in the abdominal clinic and hepatobiliary consultation center, a multidisciplinary team of physicians from medicine, surgery, imaging, and interventional medicine conducts weekly MDT rounds and multidisciplinary physicians work together to discuss difficult cases.
How can multiple therapies be effectively combined?
How do multiple treatments work together?
Surgeons are aware of the latest advances in medical drug therapy and molecular pathology diagnosis, which helps broaden their thinking and improve the overall treatment of tumors.
This is reflected in the integrated multidisciplinary treatment of some malignancies, for example:
- The overall survival of patients with rectal cancer is better when treated with preoperative synchronized radiotherapy followed by surgery;
- Overall survival is also improved in patients with locally advanced gastric cancer who have preoperative radiotherapy followed by surgical resection;
- Liver metastases from colorectal cancer, which is closely related to liver cancer, can have a five-year survival rate of 30%-40% with effective chemotherapy and targeted therapy if the primary and metastatic foci can be completely removed.
These illustrate the need for surgery to work closely with internal medicine, radiation therapy, and other disciplines to ultimately improve patient survival.