The liver is an important organ of the human body. The functions of liver include filtering the blood of harmful substances, storing glycogen or sugar for later use, and making bile, which digests the food. Liver cancer is referred to as abnormal tissue growth in the liver and reduced functionality. Two types of liver cancer are prevalent, namely, primary liver cancer and secondary liver cancer or metastatic liver cancer. The chances of liver cancer are 2% to 4% higher in men than in women. Several clinical researches and studies in the recent years suggest chemotherapy as a treatment for primary and secondary liver cancer.
Primary liver cancer is the more common type of liver cancer; here, the cancerous cells originate in the liver itself. In the metastatic liver cancer, the tumors develop in other organs such as the colon, breast, esophagus, lungs, pancreas and stomach, and spread to the liver afterwards. Migration of cancerous cells from the colon to liver is the most common. The Journal of the American Medical Association indicates the practical results of chemotherapy for liver cancer. The results reported prolonged survival periods in the patients suffering from metastatic liver cancer, originating from the colon. The average survival of the patients increased from 2.1 months to 9.4 months approximately.
The chemotherapy procedure which resulted in the above report was by protracted ambulatory infusion. In the process, a plastic catheter is inserted into the hepatic artery to infuse the anticancer drugs. This method is also referred to as intra-arterial chemotherapy. The physician starts the procedure using an angiogram. He inserts a tiny catheter through the femoral artery of the right leg to examine the arterial system of the individual. Then, the physician inserts the chemotherapy drugs directly into the artery. The drug reaches the tumor in the liver.
The liver breaks down most of the drugs before it reaches other parts of the body, so the side effects associated with this process are less.
Among the other types of chemotherapy for liver cancer is chemoembolization. According to a review by the Official Journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, chemoembolization improves the survival of the patients suffering from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or primary liver cancer. This particular method can be said as a combination of embolization and intra-arterial chemotherapy. In the embolization technique, the physicians obstruct a branch of the hepatic artery with tiny plastic particles to cut off the blood flow to the cancerous tissues. In addition, the physician uses X-ray to guide the catheter into the hepatic artery and then insert the chemotherapy drugs directly into the artery through the catheter. The drugs reach the tumor cells and destroy them. This methodology of chemotherapy for liver cancer has some side effects that are worth noting. The process limits blood flow to the normal liver cells to some extent, which may prove serious for those having cirrhosis in the parts of the liver not affected by cancer. The other side effects may include abdominal pain, blood clots in the blood vessels of liver, liver infection, gallbladder infection, and fever.
As far as the cost-effectiveness of the procedures of chemotherapy for liver cancer is concerned, the hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy is considered more cost-effective than systemic chemotherapy, with an average cost of USD $27,385 per patient. According to a report published by The Official Journal of the Society for Translational Oncology, the cost-effectiveness of the therapy with respect to survival is approximately $72,967 per life-year (LY), and it is considered to be an acceptable range.
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