Liver Cancer Treatments

The UPMC Liver Cancer Center in Pittsburgh, PA offers a number of innovative treatment strategies for people with liver cancer, liver tumors, and liver diseases.

At the UPMC Liver Cancer Center, we base our treatment philosophy on a multimodality approach. This means that we customarily explore more than one form of therapy for treating your liver cancer.

We'll help determine the best treatment for you, based on:

• Your general health
• The health of your liver
• The size and location of you tumor
• Other factors that your doctor may consider

Following treatment for liver cancer, your UPMC physician and nurse will work with you every step of the way to ensure a smooth transition to a better quality of life. Your follow-up visits may include CT scans or blood tests.

Treatment Options at the Liver Cancer Center

Surgical Resection — For people diagnosed with liver cancer, surgery (resection) offers the best chance for cure or long-term survival.

The UPMC Liver Cancer Center offers both:

• Minimally Invasive (Laparoscopic) Liver Surgery
• Traditional (Open) Liver Surgery

Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA) — For people with inoperable primary or metastatic liver tumors, RFA is an exciting new approach to destroying tumors in the liver. This procedure helps to shrink the tumor by placing a probe through an incision in the body so tiny electrodes can destroy cancer cells with heat and surgery is possible.

CyberKnife® — For people with primary or metastatic liver cancers, CyberKnife treatment is a precise form of radiation therapy that delivers high energy x-rays to treat liver tumors.

Intrahepatic Chemotherapy/Chemoembolization — For people diagnosed with liver cancer, chemoembolization is the process of injecting chemotherapy drugs into the artery that supplies blood to the tumor in the liver.

Intrahepatic Pump Therapy — For people with metastatic colon/rectal cancer, intrahepatic pump therapy administers a higher concentration of chemotherapy directly into the liver. The pump is inserted surgically and filled with chemotherapy by an oncologist.

Regional Chemotherapy — For people with inoperable liver tumors that are confined to the liver, the preferred treatment approach is either regional therapy with transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) or internal radiation with yttrium-90 spheres.

Liver Transplant — For people diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who also have cirrhosis of the liver, liver transplantation may be the best treatment option.

Complementary Strategies — In addition to providing state-of-the-art cancer treatments, the Liver Cancer Center offers an array of services to help you and your family manage the diagnosis and treatment of liver cancer.

Additional Services

• Multimodality Approach for Treating Liver Cancer — At the UPMC Liver Cancer Center, we may use multiple forms of therapy to treat liver tumors.

Contact the UPMC Liver Cancer Center

To schedule an appointment, or for more information, call the UPMC Liver Cancer Center, toll-free, at 1-855-745-4837 or complete our contact form now.