What is the effect of liver cancer interventional treatment?

  Interventional treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma currently refers to the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma by using catheters to reach the hepatic artery directly, injecting chemotherapy drugs at this location and embolizing the hepatic artery or local radiotherapy. This treatment method is relatively minimally invasive and is the best choice for non-surgical treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, with relatively good results.  Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization is used for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma or as an over-the-top treatment. Treatment can be accomplished by injecting embolic agents and multiple antitumor agents directly into the right or left hepatic artery. The aim of this approach is to restrict the vascular supply to the tumor while providing a high concentration of local chemotherapeutic agents. If the tumor persists, multiple repetitions of treatment may be administered. This treatment slows tumor progression. Highly selective or super-selective hepatic artery interventional embolization chemotherapy has little impact on liver function because it only embolizes the tumor’s blood supply artery and does not affect or slightly affects other liver tissues. Embolization is more effective in patients with no vascular invasion and small tumor size. Selective local radiation therapy is also a type of interventional treatment. It can destroy the tumor from the inside. Radiotherapy materials such as yttrium-90 are injected into the embolization microspheres through a catheter to cause local ischemia and local direct radiation to the tumor tissue to cause necrosis. This results in the treatment of liver cancer. Although it cannot cure liver cancer, it can improve the survival rate.  At present, interventional treatment for liver cancer is still a palliative treatment and is not the first choice of treatment. Among liver cancer patients who can undergo surgical resection, surgery is still the most effective way.