Liver Cancer Causes, Symptoms and Treatment

Liver cancer survival rates indicate the chances a cancer patient has of surviving the disease for a specified length of time. The rates are by no means a definite indicator of what will happen to a patient; they can at best predict a patient's chances of what might happen to him, if a type of treatment plan is opted for, based on what has happened to other patients in similar circumstances.

Liver cancer is a very serious disease that can be fatal within a year of being diagnosed for some patients. This is because the symptoms you will notice with liver cancer won't usually appear until it has become a serious medical condition. There are two major types and they are called hepatocellular and metastatic.

Primary liver cancer instances in the United States are increasing over the years as are metastatic cancer or cancer that spreads to the liver from other parts of the body. These cancers are not labelled as liver cancer but as metastatic cancer of whatever organ they originated from (i.e. metastatic colon cancer for cancer of the colon spreading into the liver).

The liver makes the different proteins that your body needs, which include enzymes, hormones, antibodies, and other substances necessary for the proper functioning of your body. It is the power plant of your body since it is the primary source of energy. It also filters your blood to remove toxins and produces bile to help in the digestion of fat. It is the most parsimonious organ in the body, extracting anything that can be used from your blood and storing it for future use.

Hepatic tumors also called Liver cancer. Hepatic tumors is are tumors or growths on or in the liver. There are many forms of liver tumors premary is Malignant. Malignant, primary liver cancer is hepatocellular carcinoma (also named hepatoma, which is a misnomer). These growths can be benign or malignant (cancerous). They may be discovered on medical imaging (even for a different reason than the cancer itself). Most of the time when cancer is found in the liver, it did not start there but spread to the liver from a cancer that began somewhere else in the body.

The other leading cause of liver cancer is chronic infection with the hepatitis C virus. So far, there is not a vaccine to protect against hepatitis C infection. The best prevention against hepatitis C as well as hepatitis B (for those who have not been vaccinated) is understanding how the viruses are spread and how to avoid contamination.

On a broad basis, we can classify liver cancer as primary liver cancer and secondary cancer. When cancer originates in the liver itself, it is called as primary liver cancer. Liver cancer is known as secondary liver cancer when it originates in some other part of the body and then spreads to liver (e.g. due to proximity of liver to the place where cancer originated in the body). Hepatoma and bile duct cancer are the two main types of liver cancer.