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.