”Liver cancer, the king of cancers, is actually not as terrible as people think. Under the background of rapid development of modern medicine, many patients have finally overcome the cancer in their long-term struggle with liver cancer through reasonable comprehensive treatment and guidance from doctors. From the perspective of modern medicine, liver cancer is no longer the so-called “king of cancers”, and chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis are no longer incurable diseases. The key is to popularize relevant medical knowledge and let patients find the right doctor and receive timely and reasonable comprehensive treatment. So, what do you need to know to beat liver cancer?
To beat liver cancer, we must first understand liver cancer
Liver cancer refers to the cancer that occurs in the liver. If the cancer is caused by the cells in the liver, it is called “primary liver cancer”; if the cancer is metastasized from other organs of the body to the liver, it is called secondary liver cancer, also called “metastatic liver cancer”.
Morphologically, primary hepatocellular carcinoma is broadly classified into giant, nodular and diffuse types. Pathologically, it can be divided into hepatocellular hepatocellular carcinoma, intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, and mixed carcinoma. Among them, hepatocellular liver cancer is the most common type of liver cancer, accounting for more than 90%. 80% of hepatocellular liver cancer is combined with liver cirrhosis, and about 50% of cirrhotic patients are combined with liver cancer. Therefore, patients with cirrhosis must be closely followed and regularly reviewed.
More than 80% of liver cancer cases in China are related to hepatitis B and C virus infection. Aflatoxin, contamination of food and water, parasitic diseases, cirrhosis, alcohol consumption, smoking and genetic factors are also related to the development of liver cancer.
Hepatitis B virus infection is the main cause of liver cancer in China. There are 120 million hepatitis B virus carriers in China. At present, there is still no effective medicine for the treatment of hepatitis B. Therefore, hepatitis B vaccination is the best way to prevent hepatitis B. After vaccination, 80% of the patients are protected from hepatitis B. After vaccination, 80% of people can be protected from hepatitis B virus infection. For hepatitis B patients, the use of antiviral drugs such as alpha interferon and lamivudine can effectively reduce the fluctuation of hepatitis and also slow down the progression of cirrhosis, thus reducing the occurrence of liver cancer.
Active prevention and treatment of viral hepatitis is important to reduce the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma. Inactivated hepatitis B virus vaccination is not only effective in preventing hepatitis, but also will play a role in preventing liver cancer. Avoiding unnecessary blood transfusion and application of blood products can effectively prevent infection with hepatitis B or other blood-borne diseases.
Early stage of liver cancer usually has no obvious clinical symptoms and signs. In the middle and late stages, liver pain, epigastric mass, abdominal distension, diarrhea, nausea, aversion to oil, vomiting, loss of appetite, weight loss, lethargy, fever, jaundice, and even cachexia and bleeding tendency will appear. Once some of the above symptoms appear, you should be highly alert and go to hospital immediately to choose reasonable tests such as blood test for AFP level, liver B-ultrasound and CT examination to confirm the diagnosis and treatment in time.
In fact, early detection of liver cancer is not difficult, and it is the easiest one among all kinds of solid cancers. With modern diagnostic methods, liver cancer of 1 cm in diameter can be detected.
The best mode of liver cancer screening is still a combination of fetoprotein and ultrasound. There is no other test that surpasses it, and it can be detected in the early stages of liver cancer development. In recent years, medical imaging has made great progress, and CT has been widely popularized and become a routine item for liver cancer examination. High-resolution CT can detect liver cancer as small as 1 cm, and most intrahepatic swellings can be diagnosed by a combination of CT, B-ultrasound and other imaging methods.
Controlling your mouth is the key to defeating liver cancer
The occurrence of liver cancer is closely related to living habits. Especially, it is related to “eating”. Therefore, to beat liver cancer, we must control our own mouth!
Long-term consumption of moldy food, food containing nitrosamines and selenium deficiency of trace elements are important factors that promote liver cancer.
Aflatoxin B1 is a substance that has been proven to have a clear carcinogenic effect and is mainly found in moldy food, such as corn, peanuts and rice. In addition, ingestion of a large number of fried or pickled food containing nitrite can lead to the accumulation of nitrite in the body can not be discharged in time, and in the body into nitrosamines, which have a direct carcinogenic effect.
As the saying goes, “drinking alcohol hurts the liver”. In fact, alcohol consumption is not the direct cause of liver cancer, but its role is similar to that of a catalyst, which can promote the occurrence and progress of liver cancer. People with long-term alcoholism are prone to liver cancer. This is because after alcohol enters the body, it is mainly metabolized in the liver. The toxicity of alcohol to liver cells impairs the breakdown and metabolism of fatty acids, causing fatty liver deposits in the liver. The more alcohol is consumed, the more serious the fatty liver will be, which will lead to liver fibrosis, cirrhosis and liver cancer. If hepatitis patients drink a lot of alcohol, it will greatly accelerate the formation and development of liver cirrhosis and promote the occurrence of liver cancer.
To prevent liver cancer, we should also pay attention to the balance of nutrients in the diet, not to be partial, and usually eat more vegetables, fruits and coarse grains, and less refined rice, refined noodles, animal fats and low-fiber foods. If you consume moldy peanuts to drink, the possibility of inducing liver cancer will be greater. In addition, rotten fish and meat contain a lot of amines, and rotten vegetables, fruits and repeatedly boiled water contain a lot of nitrites. Nitrite is very easy to combine with amine to produce carcinogenic nitrosamines.
Coarse grains, vegetables and fruits are good for preventing liver cancer because they are rich in minerals and vitamins.
Overcoming liver cancer requires overcoming psychological fear
Due to the cultural difference between East and West, in China, once a patient has cancer, the doctor first informs the family and the family decides whether to inform the patient or not; while in Western countries, on the contrary, once a patient has cancer, the doctor first informs the patient and the patient arranges his or her own treatment and life.
In our country, most people are afraid of talking about cancer, especially they lack sufficient knowledge about liver cancer, so it brings not only physical torture but also a heavy psychological burden to patients. Many patients cannot endure such pain and have various inferior emotions, and eventually lose their confidence and courage to live. Some liver cancer patients, rather than dying from the disease, are scared to death by liver cancer! It is the consensus of mankind that a good spiritual and psychological state helps to fight liver cancer. In fact, no matter what kind of disease one is suffering from, the most terrible thing is not the disease itself, but the patient’s fear and depression of the disease, which makes them lose the courage to live completely.
From the medical point of view, a good psychological state is often conducive to the body’s own immune system to fight against cancer cells. Therefore, reasonable psychological guidance for liver cancer patients can make them realize that even if they have liver cancer, they cannot escape from it, but should adopt a positive, active and open attitude, try to maintain a good mental state, firmly believe in recovery, and cooperate with doctors to actively treat the disease, which is very beneficial to stabilize and improve the disease, improve the quality of their survival and prolong the survival period. Anxiety, sadness and depression will not help but only aggravate the disease.
Defeating liver cancer requires standardized and individualized treatment
There are many treatment methods for liver cancer. In the past, the treatment of liver cancer only consisted of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Since 1980s, local treatment for liver cancer, such as radiological intervention and ultrasound intervention, has emerged.
At present, the best treatment method for liver cancer is still surgery. Surgical resection can remove the whole cancer tumor at one time, so that the body can be completely tumor-free. The best result of surgical resection is small hepatocellular carcinoma, whose five-year survival rate can reach 60%; large hepatocellular carcinoma can also achieve a five-year survival rate of about 30% after resection.
Although surgery is the most effective treatment for liver cancer, many liver cancer patients are already in the advanced stage of liver cancer when they are diagnosed due to the insidious onset of liver cancer and have lost the chance of surgery, but it does not mean that these patients have lost the chance of treatment. In addition to surgery, there are other treatment methods for liver cancer, such as radiation intervention, ultrasound intervention, radiotherapy, local ablation, radioactive particle implantation, chemical drugs, biological agents, Chinese medicine and other treatment methods.
It can be said that each of the 18 weapons has its own strengths. For unresectable liver cancer, radiological intervention is the preferred local treatment method.
Radiological intervention is to insert a catheter percutaneously into the hepatic vessels and inject drugs into the tumor surrounding and within the tumor. The most commonly used is percutaneous hepatic artery embolization chemotherapy (TACE), which achieves the dual effect of starving and killing tumor cells by injecting embolic agents and chemotherapeutic agents into the blood supply arteries of liver tumors. Ultrasound or CT-mediated local treatment methods are also numerous, including intra-tumor injection of anhydrous alcohol, glacial acetic acid, hot saline, etc.; useful for freezing, microwave, radiofrequency, high-functional focused ultrasound, etc. Their nature is the same and similar. The nature of these treatments is the same and similar, either by water attack, fire attack or cold attack, in short, using various weapons to produce high or low temperature locally to cause coagulation and necrosis of tumor tissues. These therapies are safe, simple and effective, especially for patients with liver cancer who are inoperable or refuse surgery. Of course, while treating local tumors, patients with hepatitis B or C should also be treated with combined antiviral therapy at the same time. If possible, molecularly targeted drugs (sorafenib) can also be used to reduce the size of the tumor and prevent metastasis by inhibiting the angiogenic growth of liver cancer cells. In addition, appropriate immune-enhancing therapy is also an important part to improve patients’ ability to resist malignant tumors.