“How effective is radiation therapy in liver cancer?”
My mother who is 67 years has been diagnosed with liver cancer. How effective is radiation therapy in regeneration of the healthy cells in her body? What could be the possible side effects?
4 Answers
It depends what kind of liver cancer and where it is located and if it has spread beyond the liver or originated outside of the liver and spread to the liver. Internal radioactive beads placed via the artery feeding the tumor or external radiation have both been used for certain liver cancers.
Liver cancer is a very tough cancer. It can be treated sometimes with localized infused radiation doses and sometimes, infused chemotherapy into the area of the tumor. External beam radiation and liver cancers do not seem to mesh as well. Other options depending on the size of the tumor in the liver would include radiofrequency ablation and also cryoablation.
Please note that I'm not a radiation oncologist, but, to my knowledge, radiation therapy, in its traditional form, has essentially no major role in the treatment of liver cancer. Catheter embolization with yttrium-90 has a very limited role. Basically, radiation therapy does not regenerate cells....it kills them via splitting DNA....applicable to cancer and/or normal cells.
Thank you and all the best.
Thank you and all the best.
Not very good. Transplant is the only good therapy.
