Chemoembolisation offers survival benefit for people with liver cancer

People with liver cancer that cannot be treated with surgical resection or transplantation could have an increased two-year survival if they are given chemoembolisation-a procedure in which blood supply to the tumour combined with the effect of chemotherapy inhibits cancer growth.

There is no standard treatment for liver cancer when surgery, transplantation, or percutaneous treatment is not possible, which applies to around three-quarters of all liver cancer cases. Arterial embolisation-the restriction of blood supply to the tumour-is widely used, but there is uncertainty whether it has a survival benefit.

Jordi Bruix and Josep Llovet from Hospital Clinic, Barcelona, Spain, lead a multicenter randomised trial among 112 cirrhotic patients with unresectable liver cancer to assess the survival benefits of arterial embolisation (use of gelatin sponge to block blood flow to the tumour) or chemoembolisation (gelatin sponge plus the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin) compared with conservative treatment.

The trial was stopped when it became apparent that chemoembolisation had a substantial survival benefit compared with conservative treatment. 25 of 37 patients assigned embolisation, 21 of 40 assigned chemoembolisation, and 25 of 35 assigned conservative treatment died. Survival probabilities at 1 year and 2 years were 75% and 50% for embolisation; 82% and 63% for chemoembolisation, and 63% and 27% for conservative treatment.

Jordi Bruix comments: “While we wait for confirmatory studies and from now on, chemoembolisation should become the standard approach for a selected group of candidates (unresectable intermediate hepatocellular carcinoma and preserved liver function).”

Media Contact

Richard Lane alphagalileo

All latest news from the category: Health and Medicine

This subject area encompasses research and studies in the field of human medicine.

Among the wide-ranging list of topics covered here are anesthesiology, anatomy, surgery, human genetics, hygiene and environmental medicine, internal medicine, neurology, pharmacology, physiology, urology and dental medicine.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Novel catalyst for charge separation in photocatalytic water splitting

A research team led by Prof. JIANG Hailong, Prof. LUO Yi, and Prof. JIANG Jun from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) discovered a metal-organic framework (MOF)…

Finding a missing piece for neurodegenerative disease research

Research led by the University of Michigan has provided compelling  evidence that could solve a fundamental mystery in the makeup of fibrils that play a role in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and…

BESSY II: New procedure for better thermoplastics

Thermoplastic blends, produced by a new process, have better resilience. Now, experiments at the IRIS beamline show, why: nanocrystalline layers increase their performance. Bio-based thermoplastics are produced from renewable organic…