What to Know About Chemotherapy for Liver Cancer

Chemotherapy kills any cells that grow fast, including cancer cells.

Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancer cells. The drugs attack and kill any cells that divide quickly. That means they kill cancer cells as well as some fast growing normal cells, such as those in the hair. Its goals are to shrink a tumor and keep it from spreading. How chemotherapy drugs affect normal cells depends on the amount and types of drugs used. It also depends on the person taking the drugs. Liver cancers are not very sensitive to chemotherapy.

These are the 3 main ways to get chemotherapy for liver cancer.

• Systemically, meaning drugs go through the whole body

• By local injection, straight into your liver

• By chemo-embolization

How Systemic Treatment Works

Chemotherapy for liver cancer can be given through a vein for delivery to the whole body. This is called a systemic treatment. The most common drug to treat liver cancer is Adriamycin (doxorubicin).

How Local Injection Works

Chemotherapy may also be put into an artery that goes right to your liver. This is called local injection, or more specifically, an intra-arterial treatment or intrahepatic chemotherapy. It is used less often than systemic chemotherapy. Your doctor must first test you to make sure you do not have tumors in other parts of your body. This type of chemotherapy is only considered when there are less than 3 tumors. It is also usually done only for small tumors, less than 3 centimeters, or 1½ inches. Local chemotherapy can use different chemicals. These include alcohol and acetic acid.

How Chemoembolization Works

Chemoembolization is another way to deliver chemotherapy into the hepatic artery. You may have this treatment if you can’t have surgery and you have poor liver function with advanced liver cancer. This procedure is usually used to reduce the tumor for better pain control. It may also be used to shrink the tumor before you have surgery. For it, the doctor uses X-rays to guide a small tube called a catheter into an artery in your groin and to the artery that supplies blood to the tumor. Then, the doctor injects chemotherapy drugs into the tube mixed with particles that block the blood flow (known as embolizing) to the tumor. The rest of the body isn’t exposed to the chemotherapy drugs.