Treatment of local hepatocellular carcinoma

Localized liver cancer is a cancer limited to the liver that has not metastasized to other parts of the liver or outside the liver.  

The most typical treatment options are surgery or local therapies. Physicians from different specialties will make a treatment recommendation for you in cooperation. In the case of hepatocellular carcinoma, we may also end up on a follow-up line in connection with making the diagnosis, for example, due to your other state of health, in which case your treatment will not be started immediately after the cancer diagnosis.

Surgical treatment of local hepatocellular carcinoma

Surgery is a form of treatment aimed at curing liver cancer. The aim is to remove the liver cancer either by liver transplantation or partial resection of the liver. Surgical treatment is only suitable for a small number of patients. When considering a liver transplant, we will carefully assess your eligibility for the procedure. Only after these steps can we determine whether a liver transplant is possible.  

Hepatocellular carcinoma usually develops in a cirrhotic, i.e. diseased liver, whose ability to recover is significantly weaker than that of a healthy liver. For this reason, partial resection of the liver is rarely possible, as there should be enough functional liver remaining after surgery.  

Local therapies in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma  

If surgery cannot be performed, we try to destroy the focus of carcinoma with various locally acting methods. With these treatments, our aim is to slow down the progression of cancer, but the treatments are not curative. Instead of local therapies, we can also consider drug treatments or external radiation therapy.