Multidisciplinary Approach Offers New Hope for Patients with Liver Cancer
For Immediate Release
Date: 4/23/07
Contact: Renee Gaudette 203-436-8533 or renee.gaudette@yale.edu
South Norwalk, Conn. – The American Liver Foundation and Yale-New Haven Hospital recently sponsored a symposium for physicians throughout the region to provide a comprehensive update on the treatment and care of patients with liver cancer. Hepatologists, oncologists, surgeons, and interventional radiologists from Yale Cancer Center and Yale-New Haven Hospital addressed the therapeutic options and prognosis for patients with liver cancer, a disease that kills about 170 persons in Connecticut each year.
The incidence of primary liver cancer is very high; hepatocellular carcinoma is the fifth most common malignant disease worldwide. Once a rare disease in the western countries, the incidence of primary liver cancer has doubled in the last 20 years and is expected to rise even further because of a combination of factors, including infection with hepatitis B and 7 or C viruses, alcohol consumption, steatohepatitis, iron overload, and a combination of genetic factors.
Liver cancer is also the third highest cause of cancer mortality. The physicians at Yale Cancer Center are actively working to improve the treatment options for liver cancer through coordinated efforts between specialists and the application of rigorous diseases management protocols tailored for each specific patient. With these efforts, the prognosis for patients with liver cancer is beginning to improve.
While traditional chemotherapy still has little role in treatment of liver cancer, a combination of interventional radiology and surgical techniques, including liver transplantation are now available and in selected patients can even cure the disease. For patients diagnosed with early disease, liver transplantation can provide the definitive cure for both the cancer and the advanced liver disease that frequently always accompanies a diagnosis of cancer. For patients that do not have advanced liver disease or for patients that cannot receive a liver transplant, surgical resection, ablative therapy or transarterial chemoembolization can provide excellent survival, if applied to the correct candidate.
With so many treatment techniques available, patients with cancer of the liver should be referred to medical centers able to provide a diversified approach to the treatment of hepatoma. As the only National Cancer Institute designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Connecticut, Yale Cancer Center is able to offer an entire spectrum of potential therapeutic approaches to our patients, from surgical resection, to liver transplantation, radiofrequency ablation, and transarterial chemoembolization.
At Yale Cancer Center and Yale-New Haven Hospital, patients with liver cancer are presented and discussed in weekly conferences among diagnostic radiologists (Drs. Jeffrey Weinreb and Gary Israel), hepatologists (Drs. Mario Strazzabosco and Tamar Taddei), abdominal surgeons (Drs. Ronald Salem and Charles Cha), interventional radiologists (Dr. Jeffrey Pollak), pathologists (Drs. Marie Robert and Dhanpat Jain), medical oncologists (Dr. Wasif Saif), and transplant surgeons (Drs. David Cronin and Sanjay Kulkarni). A consensus on the best treatment for each patient is then reached. Following treatment, the patients are then seen in follow up in the Yale Hepatology clinic to manage the underlying liver disease, preserve liver function, and survey for possible recurrence.
The symposium is part of the efforts from the Connecticut Chapter of the American Liver Foundation to provide the most current information to physicians on the management of liver cancer and to ensure that patients with liver cancer have access to the latest treatment options available. For more information on Liver Disease or the ALF contact the chapter at: 203.234.2022 or visit the website: www.liverfoundation.org
Yale Cancer Center is one of a select network of 39 comprehensive cancer centers in the country designated by the National Cancer Institute and the only one in Southern New England. The Center harnesses the scientific resources of Yale University School of Medicine, Yale-New Haven Hospital, and Yale University. Yale Cancer Center focuses on translational research, an approach through which laboratory discoveries are quickly and efficiently integrated with clinical patient care. For more information visit www.yalecancercenter.org