Liver Cancer: MedlinePlus | Patients Facts |

Liver Cancer

URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/livercancer.html

Also called: Hepatocellular carcinoma

Your liver is the largest organ inside your body. It filters harmful substances from the blood, digests fats from food and stores the sugar that your body uses for energy. Primary liver cancer starts in the liver. Metastatic liver cancer starts somewhere else and spreads to your liver.

Risk factors for primary liver cancer include

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

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 cancer may not be found until it is advanced. This makes it harder to treat. Treatment options include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or liver transplantation.

NIH: National Cancer Institute

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Liver Cancer: MedlinePlus

Liver Transplantation

URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/livertransplantation.html

Also called: Hepatic transplantation

Your liver helps fight infections and cleans your blood. It also helps digest food and stores energy for when you need it. You cannot live without a liver that works. If your liver fails, your doctor may put you on a waiting list for a liver transplant. Doctors do liver transplants when other treatments cannot keep a damaged liver working.

During a liver transplantation, the surgeon removes the diseased liver and replaces it with a healthy one. Most transplant livers come from a donor who has died. Sometimes a healthy person donates part of his or her liver for a specific patient. In this case the donor is called a living donor. The most common reason for transplantation in adults is cirrhosis. This is a disease in which healthy liver cells are killed and replaced with scar tissue. The most common reason in children is biliary atresia, a disease of the bile ducts.

People who have transplants must take drugs for the rest of their lives to keep their bodies from rejecting their new livers.

NIH: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

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Liver Transplantation: MedlinePlus


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