Liver Cancer Health Video

Video Transcript

JUSTIN C. K. DAVIS: Hi! My name is Dr. Justin Davis and today we'll be talking about liver cancer also known as hepatocellular cancer. Now, hepatocellular cancer is a cancer that first develops in the liver. Many cancers that are found in the liver are cause by other kinds of cancers that travel from the primary site to the liver, but these are not liver cancers, these are cancers for example lung cancer that may have metastasize and traveled to the liver. So these are not true cancers but metastatic cancers. For example, lung cancer is a cancer that often metastasizes, it travels to other places in the body and they go often to places like the liver, but a true liver cancer is when the liver cells actually develop into a cancer themselves. Now, the good thing is that this is not that usual but the bad news is that when it's detected, it's rarely detected early on and this is a very aggressive cancer that can be difficult to treat. The symptoms of liver cancer, well, one of the reasons why it's often not detected early are there are relatively few symptoms until it becomes much more advanced. Now, as it becomes a larger and more aggressive and advanced stage cancer, the symptoms will be what you may experience with failure or disruption of the normal liver function. So you may experience bloating or pain in the right upper quadrant or back. You may have a backup of fluid into the legs or the abdomen which is called ascites. You can have jaundice which is when the skin or the eyes becomes yellow as the liver is unable to break down its normal products of bilirubin but whatever the symptoms are, they're often not very pleasant and cause for concern. The treatment for liver cancer really depends upon the stage of the liver cancer has reached by the time it's detected. Sometimes surgeries are employed to remove parts of the liver that are infected but if this isn't possible, then perhaps chemotherapy or radiation therapy maybe used to try to slow down the advance or the spread of the liver. So what can you do to prevent liver cancer? Well, liver cancer is usually caused by chronic ongoing inflammation within the liver and this maybe caused by things that cause scarring otherwise known as cirrhosis of the liver like long-term chronic drinking or another prevalent cause in United States as well as throughout the world is undiagnosed or untreated hepatitis B. Both of these are preventable. You can certainly not have the heavy alcohol consumption through your life if you're concerned about liver cancer and hepatitis B you can be screened for and there is now a vaccination that can prevent you from having hepatitis B. So what should you do? Well, certainly if you have any symptoms of abdominal pain, swelling, jaundice, undiagnosed fatigues and fevers, anything like that, it's always a very important idea to be checked out by a doctor as soon as possible.