TITLE:
Management of Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Updated Review
AUTHORS:
Tamer Elbaz, Mohamed El Kassas, Gamal Esmat
KEYWORDS:
Hepatocellular Carcinoma; Staging; Molecular Targeted Therapies
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Cancer Therapy,
Vol.4 No.2,
April
15,
2013
ABSTRACT: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) represents one of the most challenging potentially curable tumors with high incidence, prevalence and mortality rates. For proper assessment, prognosis estimation and treatment decisions, at least seven important guidelines and staging systems were designated. Proper treatment needs the interaction of multidisciplinary HCC clinic to choose the most appropriate line of treatment. The different modalities of management include resection (surgery or transplantation), local ablation, chemoembolization, radioembolization and molecular targeted therapies with a wide range of investigational drugs that developed after the FDA approved sorafenib. Downstaging and bridging are two important strategies to manage HCC patients who will undergo liver transplantation to improve their postoperative survival. Finally, survival and prognosis depends on several prognostic factors that are either patient related or tumor related. In our study, we aim to provide an updated comprehensive review of the different aspects of liver cancer management starting from staging systems to the different applied treatment modalities.