When planning your treatment, it is important to take into account is the stage (extent) of the cancer. But you and your cancer care team will also want to think about your age, general state of health, and personal preferences.

It may be a good idea to get a second opinion, especially from a doctor experienced in treating liver cancer. A second opinion can give you more information and help you feel more confident about the treatment plan that you pick. Some insurance companies want a second opinion before they will agree to pay for certain treatments. Almost all will pay for the second opinion.

Surgery

At this time surgery offers the only likely chance to cure liver cancer. Surgery is done either to remove the tumor or do a liver transplant. If all of the cancer that the surgeon can see at the time of the operation can be removed, you have the best outlook for survival. But complete removal of most liver cancers is not possible. Often the cancer is large, is found in many different parts of the liver, or has spread beyond the liver. Also, many people with cirrhosis do not have enough healthy liver left to make surgery an option.

Risks and side effects of surgery

People with liver cancer often have damage to the other parts of their liver. Surgeons have to remove enough of the liver to try to get all of the cancer, yet leave enough behind for the liver to work the way it needs to.

Bleeding after surgery is a major concern. On top of this, the liver normally makes substances that help the blood clot. Damage to the liver (both before the surgery and during the surgery itself) can add to possible bleeding problems. Another concern is that because the remaining liver still contains the disease damage that led to the cancer, sometimes a new liver cancer can develop later.

Liver transplant

A liver transplant is an option for people with small liver cancers. For now, transplant is saved for those with a few small tumors that cannot be totally removed, either because of the location of the tumors or because not enough normal liver remains.

Not many livers are available for patients with cancer because they are most often used for more curable diseases. Patients often must wait a long time, often too long, for a liver to be found. For this reason, some doctors suggest a limited resection first and then a transplant if the cancer comes back.

Increased awareness about organ donation is a crucial public health goal that could make this treatment available to more patients with liver cancer and other serious liver diseases.

Another option that has been used in recent years is having a living donor give a part of their liver for transplant to a close relative. This can work, but it carries risk for the donor. About 300 living donor transplants are done in the United States each year. Only a small percent are for people with liver cancer.

Possible risks and side effects of a liver transplant

People who get a liver transplant have to be given drugs to help suppress the immune system and prevent the body from rejecting the new organ. These drugs have their own risks and side effects, especially the risk of getting serious infections. Some of the drugs used to prevent rejection can also cause other health problems. Future medical advances are expected to reduce the risk of rejection and the harsh side effects.

Tumor ablation and embolization

Ablation refers to a local treatment that destroys the tumor without removing it. There are a number of different ways to do this. These treatments are usually used for patients with only a few small tumors that cannot be taken out with surgery. They are not meant to cure the cancer but can allow people to live longer.

Embolization is another treatment for tumors that cannot be removed. A material is put in the artery that carries blood to the tumor. This blocks the blood flow and makes it harder for the tumor to grow.

Chemoembolization involves combining embolization with chemotherapy. Studies are now going on to see if this works better than embolization alone.

Radioembolization combines embolization with radiation therapy. It is done by injecting small radioactive beads or oils into the artery that feeds the liver. This allows small amounts of radiation to only get at the tumor sites. These techniques are still fairly new and are discussed in more detail in the section “What’s new in liver cancer research?”

Radiation treatment

Radiation therapy is treatment that uses high-energy rays (such as x-rays) to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. External beam radiation delivers radiation from outside the body to the cancer. Liver cancer cells can be killed by radiation, but this treatment can’t be used at very high doses because normal liver tissue is killed, too. This type of radiation may be used to shrink a liver tumor or to give relief from symptoms like pain, but it does not cure the liver cancer and usually does not help people live longer.

Three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3DCRT) is a newer type of external-beam radiation treatment. It uses computers to map the exact location of a tumor. This lowers the damage to normal tissue and allows higher doses to be used. When available, this approach is usually preferred over standard radiation treatment.

Possible side effects of radiation treatment

Side effects of radiation treatment might include sunburn-like skin problems at the place where the radiation enters the body, nausea, vomiting, and tiredness. Often these go away after treatment. Radiation might also make chemo side effects worse.

Targeted therapy

As researchers have learned more about the changes in cells that cause cancer, they have been able develop newer drugs that are aimed at these changes. Targeted drugs do not work the same as standard chemo drugs (which are described in the next section). They often have different, and less severe, side effects.

Like chemo these drugs enter the bloodstream and go throughout the body. This makes them useful against cancers that have spread to distant organs. Because chemo has not worked well in most patients with liver cancer, doctors have begun testing and using targeted therapies.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy (often called “chemo”) is the use of drugs to kill cancer cells. Usually the drugs are given into a vein or by mouth. Once the drugs get in the blood, they spread throughout the body. This makes them useful for cancer that has spread to distant organs.

Liver cancer does not respond to most chemo drugs. The drugs that have worked best are doxorubicin (Adriamycin®) 5-fluorouracil, and cisplatin. But most studies have not shown that chemo helps liver cancer patients to live longer.

Possible side effects of chemo

Chemo can have side effects like these:

• mouth sores
• loss of appetite
• hair loss
• nausea and vomiting
• a higher chance of infection (from a shortage of white blood cells)
• easy bleeding or bruising (from a shortage of blood platelets)
• tiredness and shortness of breath (from low red blood cell counts)

Most side effects go away once treatment is over. If you have side effects, be sure to tell your doctor or nurse. There are often ways to help.

Liver cancer survival rates

Only a small number of liver cancers are found in the early stages and can be removed with surgery. The 5-year survival rate for patients with resectable early stage cancer is in the range of 30% to 60%. This percentage drops for more advanced cancers or with more severe liver disease.

The 5-year survival rate refers to the percentage of patients who live at least 5 years after their cancer is diagnosed. Five-year rates are used to produce a standard way of discussing prognosis. Of course, some people live much longer than 5 years.

The 5-year survival rate for people with cancer that has spread widely throughout the liver or to distant sites is less than 5%, and the average survival time is often measured in months.

The overall 5-year survival rate from liver cancer is less than 10%. Part of the reason for this low survival rate is that most patients with liver cancer also have other liver problems such as cirrhosis, which itself can be fatal.

Each person is different

While numbers provide an overall picture, keep in mind that every person’s situation is unique and statistics can’t predict exactly what will happen in your case. Talk with your cancer care team if you have questions about your personal chances of a cure, or how long you might survive your cancer. They know your situation best

Risk factors for primary liver cancer include

* Having hepatitis
* Having cirrhosis, or scarring of liver
* Being male
* Low weight at birth

Cancer symptoms can include a lump or pain on the right side of your abdomen and yellowing of the skin. However, you may not have symptoms and the liver cancer may not be found until it is advanced. This makes it harder to treat. Liver cancer treatment options include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or liver transplantation.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for 87 percent of all lung cancers diagnosed. Currently, the best treatment for stage I NSCLC is surgery or stereotactic radiation therapy (SRT), often followed by chemotherapy if the lesion was larger than 3 cm or radiotherapy and chemotherapy if the surgical margin or hilar or mediastinal nodes were positive at the time of operation. The five-year survival outcomes are very high, with 50 to 67 percent of these patients living at least five years after diagnosis if patients had a well staged stage I NSCLC. When surgery is not an option because the patient has heart problems or other complications, treatment options include varying types of radiation therapy and chemotherapy, alone or in combination.

In this study, doctors at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston wanted to see if conventional radiation therapy worked as well as the newer three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (also called 3D-CRT) at curing patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer. 3D-CRT was created to improve upon older types of radiation therapy by allowing doctors to aim several radiation beams at the tumor to shape or “conform” the radiation to the lung. The idea is that tailoring each beam allows doctors to give more radiation to the tumor while keeping it away from nearby healthy tissues.

Between 1978 and 2003, 200 patients with medically inoperable stage I NSCLC were treated with radiation therapy alone. Eighty-five received 3D-CRT while 115 received conventional therapy. Thirty-six percent of patients who received 3D-CRT lived five years after diagnosis compared to 10 percent who received the conventional therapy. Their causes of deaths were more related to intercurrent disease rather than cancer. Local failure was significantly reduced by 3D-CRT compared to conventional RT.

“This study proves that three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy improves outcomes for patients with medically inoperable stage I non-small cell lung cancer,” said Ritsuko Komaki, M.D. “Patients with this type of lung cancer should ask their radiation oncologist about 3D-CRT.” Dr. Komaki is a radiation oncologist and professor at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The cervix is the name for the lowest part of the uterus. The uterus is an organ that only women have, and it is where a baby grows and develops when a woman is pregnant. During pregnancy, the uterus has an enormous increase in size. When a woman is not pregnant, the uterus is a small, pear-shaped organ that sits between a woman’s rectum and her bladder. The cervix connects the uterus with the birth canal (the vagina). The cervix can both be visualized and sampled by your doctor during a routine pelvic examination in his or her office.

The narrow neck of the uterus is called the cervix. This is where cervical cancer may develop

What is cervical cancer?

Cervical cancer develops when cells in the cervix begin to grow out of control and can then invade nearby tissues or spread throughout the body. Large collections of cells that grow abnormally are called tumors. Some tumors are not cancer, because they cannot spread or threaten someone’s life. These are called benign tumors. The tumors that can spread throughout the body or invade nearby tissues are considered cancer and are called malignant tumors. Usually, cervix cancer is very slow growing, although in certain circumstances it can grow and spread quickly.

Cancers are characterized by the cells that they originally form from. The most common type of cervical cancer is called squamous cell carcinoma; it comes from cells that lie on the surface of the cervix known as squamous cells. Squamous cell cervical cancer compromises about 80% of all cervical cancers. The second most common form is adenocarcinoma; it comes from cells that make up glands in the cervix. The percentage of cervical cancers that are adenocarcinomas has risen since the 1970s, although no one knows exactly why. About 3% to 5% of cervical cancers have characteristics of both squamous and adenocarcinomas and are called adenosquamous carcinomas. There are a few other very rare types like small cell and neuroendocrine carcinoma that are so infrequent that they will not be discussed further here.

Cervical cancer symptoms?

Abnormal cervical cell changes rarely cause symptoms. But you may have symptoms if those cell changes grow into cervical cancer. Symptoms of cervical cancer may include:

Bleeding from the vagina that is not normal, or a change in your menstrual cycle that you can’t explain.
Bleeding when something comes in contact with your cervix, such as during sex or when you put in a diaphragm.
Pain during sex.
Vaginal discharge that is tinged with blood.

Cervical cancer treatment options?

Cervical cancer that is caught early can usually be cured. If the cancer is caught very early, you still may be able to have children after treatment.

The treatment for most stages of cervical cancer removes the cancer and makes you unable to have children. These treatments include:

A hysterectomy and removal of pelvic lymph nodes with or without removal of both ovaries and fallopian tubes. Radiation therapy. Chemotherapy.

On June 15, 2006, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a combination of two chemotherapy drugs, hycamtin and cisplatin for women with late-stage (IVB) cervical cancer treatment. Combination treatment has significant risk of neutropenia, anemia, and thrombocytopenia side effects. Hycamtin is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline

3D-CRT is an advanced form of EBRT, and IMRT is an advanced form of 3D-CRT. Therefore, the way radiation oncologists prepare their patients for the procedure is similar. Patients receiving external radiation therapy usually receive treatments Monday through Friday for 5 to 9 weeks depending on the doctor’s prescription. Radiotherapy usually begins with a CT (computer tomography) scan of the prostate gland and the surrounding organs. The CT scan takes a 3D-picture of the prostate gland and the surrounding organs and a team of radiation physicists and dosimetrists plan a target area for the radiation beam. The target area conforms to the shape of the patient’s prostate gland and, to ensure correct positioning, the patient will have his target area marked with permanent ink. The team will further use alignment lasers to direct the radiation beam. The patient, who is lying on his back, receives therapy from the linear accelerator which moves up, down, and around to hit the target area from different angles.

3-Dimensional Conformal Radiation Therapy
3-dimensional conformal radiation therapy introduces the use of a body immobilization device. Since positioning is everything for the radiation oncologist, an immobile patient target area is much easier to hit than the target area of a patient who might sneeze or inadvertently change positions. The CT scan is performed on a computer with specialized software that takes detailed cross-sectional pictures of the patient’s internal anatomy. The linear accelerator is then aimed precisely at each of the targeted areas in these pictures. The prostate gland therefore can receive a much stronger dose of radiation while the surrounding organs receive much less.

Intensity Modulated Radiation Beam Therapy
Intensity modulated radiation therapy takes 3D-CRT a step further. The intensity of the beam is modified so that much smaller beams of radiation are delivered from multiple angles at smaller intervals. A patient receives more beams of radiation, but since these beams are thinner, they are capable of hitting the target more precisely while not hitting the healthy tissue. IMRT is currently not as common in the United States as 3D-CRT, but is gaining popularity as a prostate cancer treatment.

Proton Beam Radiation Therapy
The technique of conformal proton beam radiation therapy is similar to that of 3D-conformal radiation therapy. The proton is a subatomic particle, not a wave like the photon. Protons deposit their energy into tissue only as they begin to slow down after being produced by the linear accelerator. A radiation oncologist can therefore determine to which speed to accelerate the protons, resulting in maximum amount of energy being deposited into the prostate tumor. The proton can be aimed with extreme precision and is often used for delicate surgeries such as those involving the eye or spine. Conformal proton beam radiation therapy is the most expensive type of radiotherapy, and is usually used in conjunction with another type of EBRT.

How Radiotherapy Destroys Prostate Cancer
Patients who opt for radiotherapy as their prostate cancer treatment will go 5 times a week for 5 to 9 weeks depending on the doctor’s prescription and the extent of the disease. Radiotherapy can be inconvenient, but exposing the cancerous cells to lowered doses of radiation damages their DNA by creating free radicals. Normal cells are able to quickly repair this damage before dividing, but cancerous cells cannot. Since prostate cancer grows slowly, many weeks of therapy are necessary to continually damage the DNA that a cancerous cell may otherwise have time to repair.

The prostate is normally about 3 cm long (slightly more than 1 inch) and lies at the neck of the bladder and in front of the rectum.

The prostate surrounds the urethra, which is a tubular structure that carries sperm and urine out of the penis.

It produces a thin, milky fluid that is added to the sperm at the time of ejaculation.

Older men often have an enlarged prostate, which is a noncancerous condition called benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) that causes urinary symptoms.
Cancer occurs when normal cells undergo a transformation in which they grow and multiply without normal controls.

As the cells multiply, they form a mass called a tumor.

Tumors are cancerous only if they are malignant. This means that they invade neighboring tissues because of their uncontrolled growth.

They may also travel to remote organs via the bloodstream.

This process of invading and spreading to other organs is called metastasis.

Tumors overwhelm surrounding tissues by invading their space and taking the oxygen and nutrients they need to survive and function.
Almost all prostate cancers arise from the secretory glandular cells in the prostate. Cancer arising from a glandular cell is known as adenocarcinoma. Therefore, almost all prostatic cancers are prostatic adenocarcinomas.
In the United States, cancer of the prostate is a common malignant cancer in men, second only to lung cancer. About 200,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, and about 30,000 men die of the disease each year.

Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system

Prostate Cancer Symptoms

Most men with prostate cancer have no symptoms. This is particularly true of early prostate cancer.

• Most prostate cancers are discovered incidentally when a digital rectal exam is performed.
• A digital rectal exam is part of a thorough regular health examination. Digital refers to finger.
• During the digital rectal exam, the examiner inserts a gloved and lubricated finger in the rectum to feel the prostate for abnormalities.

Symptoms usually appear when the tumor causes some degree of urinary blockage at the bladder neck or the urethra.

• The usual symptoms include difficulty in starting and stopping the urinary stream, increase in frequency of urination, and painwhile urinating.
• The urinary stream may be diminished (urinary retention), or it may simply dribble out.
• Even after urination, there is a sense of bladder fullness because the bladder has not been fully emptied.

Less common symptoms are blood in the urine (hematuria), painful ejaculation, orimpotence (inability to have an erection).

• These 3 symptoms are uncommon in early stages of the disease. They usually occur when the cancer is advanced.
• As the cancer advances to cause a greater blockage, bladder function may deteriorate further.
• Men with such advanced cancers sometimes experience recurring urinary tractinfections.

Despite these symptoms, many men do not seek medical care until the cancer has spread. Symptoms of metastatic disease include fatigue, malaise, and weight loss. Spread to the bones causes deep bone pain, especially in the hips and back, and bone fractures from weakening of the bone.

Prostate Cancer Treatment Options:

Prostate Seed Implant – Minimally invasive surgery lasts 1-2 hours with a possible overnight stay; most return to normal activities in a few days.

Salvage Chemotherapy – Chemotherapy is administered orally, or by a computerized pump, or by frequent injections at a doctor’s office.

Minimally Invasive Surgery – Cryosurgery takes about 2 hours with a possible overnight admission.

Shrinking the Prostate – Surgical castration patients return home the day of the surgery. Treatment is given orally or by injection.

Radiation Treatment – Radiation therapy generally requires 5 treatments per week over 6-8 weeks.

Prostate Removal – Length of prostatectomy surgeries, recovery times, and hospital stays vary according to specific prostatectomy procedure.

Monitoring and Care – Expectant therapy includes regular visits to a doctor for prostate specific antigen (PSA) tests and digital rectal exams.

Chemically, asbestos minerals are silicate compounds, meaning they contain atoms of silicon and oxygen in their molecular structure.

Asbestos minerals are divided into two major groups: Serpentine asbestos and amphibole asbestos. Serpentine asbestos includes the mineral chrysotile, which has long, curly fibers that can be woven. Chrysotile asbestos is the form that has been used most widely in commercial applications. Amphibole asbestos includes the minerals actinolite, tremolite, anthophyllite, crocidolite, and amosite. Amphibole asbestos has straight, needle-like fibers that are more brittle than those of serpentine asbestos and are more limited in their ability to be fabricated

Smokers who are also exposed to asbestos have a greatly increased risk of lung cancer

Asbestos Lung Cancer Among Workers

Studies show an increase in lung cancer among workers exposed to asbestos. This increase is particularly significant among asbestos–exposed workers who smoke. A dose–response relationship exists both for the degree of asbestos exposure and the amount of cigarette smoking. Search Asbestos and Cigarettes.

Asbestos Lung Cancer Explained

Most asbestos lung cancer starts in the lining of the bronchi, the tubes into which the trachea or windpipe divides. However, asbestos lung cancer can also begin in other areas such as the trachea, bronchioles (small branches of the bronchi), or alveoli (lung air sacs). Although lung cancer usually develops slowly, once it occurs, cancer cells can break away and spread to other parts of the body.

The two most common types of lung cancer are small cell lung cancer (SCLC), in which the cancer cells are small and round, and non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), in which the cancer cells are larger. Sometimes a cancer has features of both types, and is called mixed small cell/large cell cancer.

Non–small cell lung cancer accounts for almost 80% of lung cancers. Small cell lung cancer accounts for about 20% of all lung cancers (American Cancer Society, Lung Cancer). Although the cancer cells are small, they can multiply quickly and form large tumors. The tumors can spread to the lymph nodes and to other organs.

Early–stage asbestos lung cancer may be asymptomatic (without symptoms). The methods used to diagnose asbestos lung cancer include imaging tests, biopsies, and taking phlegm (spit) samples. Search Asbestos Lung Cancer Diagnosis.

Asbestos can cause the following symptoms:

Shortness of breath, wheezing, or hoarseness.
A persistent cough that gets worse over time.
Blood in the sputum (fluid) coughed up from the lungs.
Pain or tightening in the chest.
Difficulty swallowing.
Swelling of the neck or face.
Loss of appetite.
Weight loss.
Fatigue or anemia.

Cancer gives you no symptoms or signs that exclusively indicate the disease. Every complaint for cancer can explain a harmless condition as well. If you have symptoms, however, you should see a doctor for further evaluation. Some common symptoms are as follows: