What is Liver Cancer?

Before we can take a deeper look into what Liver Cancer is specifically, it is important that we have a good idea of what exactly cancer itself is. 

As we learn through most of our science courses, normal and healthy cells within our body grow, divide, and die on their own, in this order.  When we are young, our cells go through this process much more quickly in order to help us grow.  As we get older, cells divide as needed to replace cells that are dying.  However, when this process becomes out of control, cancer begins.  Unlike normal cells that eventually die, cancer cells don’t die on their own; this means they continue to divide and create new cancer cells.  Because these begin to get out of control, these cells start invading in other areas of the body, or tissues.  Once they invade other tissues within the body, they begin to grow and divide within that area as well.  This is the biggest difference between cancer cells and normal cells.

www.cancer.gov

One important thing to remember with cancer is that there are many different kinds of cancer.  Although the effects of each are different, they all start due to an abnormal growth of cancer cells.  When looking at what type of cancer a person has, we look at where the cancer itself originated within the body.  This means that the diagnostic type of cancer a patient has is where the cancer cells were found first in the body.  Even after the cells move to another part of the body and begin to divide in a new location, the cancer maintains the original location it started.  For example, if cancer cells first appear in a patient’s liver, and then spread to the prostate, the cancer is still considered to be liver cancer.

So… What is liver cancer?

In order to help us better understand liver cancer, it is important that we look into what exactly is the function of a normal liver.  Our liver is an extremely important organ within our body.  In fact, there’s really no way for us to live without our liver.  In fact, our liver has four extremely important jobs: breaking down and storing nutrients that our come from our intestines, it helps clot our blood when we cut or injury ourselves, makes bile to absorb the nutrients from our intestines, and it filters the waste and toxins within our blood that is later removed.

www.bath.ac.uk

Liver cancer is actually broken down into two different categories: primary and secondary.  The difference between these two is where the cancer originates.  Primary liver cancer is cancer that starts in the liver.  Something many people don’t really know is that liver cancer actually has more than one type of cancer.  The most common form of liver cancer is Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).  This form happens to be the most common form of liver cancer found in adults; 4 out of 5 cases of liver cancer are diagnosed as HCC.  Bile duct cancer (cholangiocarcinoma) is another type of primary liver cancer; however, this form only shows up in about 1 or 2 out of 10 patients diagnosed with liver cancer.

Just like many other forms of cancer, liver cancer also has two rare forms that are considered primary: Angiosarcomas and hemangiosarcomas.  Unlike the other two that begin in cells or bile duct, these forms begin in the cells that line the blood vessels of the liver.  Unfortunately with patients who become diagnosed with this form, it is nearly impossible to remove the tumor, that grows quickly, because it has already become widespread.  Although treatment for the other two primary types of liver cancer provides a chance for patients to rid of the cancer, Angiosarcomas and hemangiosarcomas are different.  Due to the widespread, treatment only provides patients with an opportunity to slow down the disease, but these two types of cancer almost always “win the fight” against the patient.

One last primary type of liver cancer is Hepatoblastoma, which is a rare form of cancer that typically is found in children under that age of 4.  Two-Thirds of the children who develop this type of cancer have good outcomes from surgery and chemotherapy because the cancer has not spread yet.

Secondary liver cancers are cancers that originated in another part of the body and have spread to the liver.  According to the American Cancer Society, secondary types of liver cancer are much more common than primary liver cancers.  In fact, most of the common types of cancer, like breast cancer and colon cancer, spread to the liver.  What makes secondary liver cancer different from primary liver cancer is that the secondary liver cancer cells act and look like the cancer cells of the originating place within the body; in other words, the secondary cells don’t look like primary liver cancer cells and are treated with the treatment from the primary location.

We will use this information as we continue to take a deeper looks into the bits and pieces of liver cancer soon to come!

Resources used:

American Cancer Society. (2013). Liver Cancer. Retrieved from American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003058-pdf.pdf

Mayo Clinic Staff. (2014). Liver Cancer. Retrieved from Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/liver-cancer/basics/definition/con-20025222

National Liver Foundation. (2013, December 12). Liver Cancer. Retrieved from American Liver Foundation: http://www.liverfoundation.org/abouttheliver/info/livercancer/