Liver Cancer

    The liver cancer is a disease in which cancerous cells (malignant) start to grow in the liver tissue. The live is one of bigger organ of the body. The liver is placed in the right superior part of the abdomen and it is protected by the thorax cavity. This organ has different functions. Among them, the most important one is to transform food into energy, another function is the one of filter and blood reservoir.

    There are a great diversity of neoplasm that can affect the liver and the biliary system. Some of them are primary neoplasms and metastatics, being more frequent the last ones. The secondary neoplasms more frequent in dogs are lymphosarcoma and the pancreatic carcinoma and in cats is the lymphosarcoma. The hepatic primary neoplasms are frequent in dogs as well as in cats. The mesenchymatose primary neoplasms are even less frequent while the most habitual are the hemangiosarcoma and the leiomyosarcoma. These types of neoplasms affect old animals (10 years). The carcinomas can get three different shapes, one of them is like one mass affecting one lobe, the other is many nodules affecting different lobes and the last one is a diffuse shape and infiltrated (all over the liver).

 

Symptoms.
    The symptoms in the dog are rather unspecific until the hepatic dysfunction appeared. Usually, on an advanced stage, the symptoms are: anorexia, depression, slimming, thirst and urine increase (polyuria/polydipsia), vomits, abdominal distension, jaundice, diarrhea and hemorrhages. The neurological signs are depression, dementia, convulsion cause by HE or metastasis in the Central Nervous System. In cats the most frequent signs are anorexia and depression while the less frequent are ascites and vomits. If the patient has any of these symptoms, the vet can order special radiographies, ultrasound scanning, etc… If the exam shows a mass, the vet can insert a needle in the abdomen to extract a small piece of liver tissue; this procedure is called needle biopsy. The vet will order an analysis of the tissue with the microscope so as to determine if there are cancerous cells.

Treatment.
The treatments of the liver cancer will depend in the stage of the disease, the condition of the liver, the age of the patient and the general state of health. The treatments will not depend only in the mentioned factors but also in the complexity of the veterinary surgery or of the oncology centre where the patient who suffers from liver cancer will be treated. There are three types of treatments: surgery (the extraction of the cancer in an operation), radiotherapy (the use of X rays in order to eliminate the cancerous cells) and the chemotherapy (the use of medicine in order to destroy the cancerous cells).

The surgery can be used to remove the cancer or to replace the liver. A liver resection consists in the extraction of part of the liver where the cancer is found. If the vet removes all he visible cancer during the operation, the patient can be administrated chemotherapy before the surgery in order to eliminate any remaining cancerous cell. This type of chemotherapy, the one given before the surgery, is called adjuvant chemotherapy.

The radiotherapy consists in the use of X rays or other high energy rays in order to eliminate the cancerous cells and to reduce tumors. The origins of the radiation can be a machine situated outside the body (external beam radiotherapy) or the application of some materials that contains radiation by thin tubes in the area where the cancerous cells are placed (internal radiotherapy).

The chemotherapy consists in the use of medicine that destroys the cancerous cells. The chemotherapy for the liver cancer, generally, is introduced to the body inserting a needle to a vein or an artery.    This type of chemotherapy is considered to be a systematic treatment because the medicine is introduced in the blood stream where goes through the body and it can destroy the cancerous which are not in the place where the tumor is.
Prognosis.

    The recover possibilities (prognosis) and the treatment selection depend in the cancer stage (if it is only found in the liver or if it has spread to other places) and the patient health condition in general. However, it is rather important to explain that the prognosis is usually from under observation to serious and in most of the cases the treatment is often a tool to improve the life quality not a tool to cure.

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