my father was just diagnosed with liver cancer.. and i'm having
trouble finding information about mortality rates.  He has five tumors
in his liver - the largest is 5cm.  They're still doing tests to see
if the cancer has spread to any other areas of his body, but he seems
convinced that he is terminal. My father's first doctor gave him about
six months to live.. but I can't find any information on how long he
should expect to live, or what percentage of liver cancer patients
survive.

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 07 Jan 2004 09:51 PST

Can you be more specific about the type of cancer involved?

tutuzdad-ga

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Clarification of Question by yellowdandelion-ga on 07 Jan 2004 10:53 PST

metastatic liver cancer, i believe, but they're still doing tests.

Hello yellowdandelion,

I?m sorry to hear of your father?s diagnosis. You must know by now
that the news may not be good. It is not uncommon for a patient, upon
hearing they have a diagnosis of cancer, to feel their disease is
terminal. It takes some time to digest this kind of  news, and to come
to grips with it. I could not say it better than this Flower Essences
Magazine  site ??suppose you or a loved-one has just been diagnosed
with cancer. Time seems to stop. Everything else in your life may
recede as fear, shock, panic, helplessness, denial, grief, or anger
take the forefront. Regardless of the prognosis offered, you're shaken
and unsure as the ground seems to tilt beneath your feet.?

No one can precisely predict a patient?s mortality rate?this depends
greatly on the patient?s condition, the time of diagnosis, the
treatment selected, the extent of the disease,  etc. If you feel
uncomfortable with your father?s doctor?s diagnosis or treatment
recommendations, by all means get a second opinion!

The liver has a very rich blood supply, and is, in most instances, a
secondary metastasis (a spreading of a cancer) location from a primary
cancer elsewhere. Simply  put, cancers from another part of the body
prefer to migrate/spread  first to the lymphatic system, and secondly
to the liver. Almost all (but not ALL) liver cancers originate
elsewhere in the body. Multiple tumors are common.

From the Merck Manual: ?Sometimes very sick people live a few months
or years, well past what seemed possible. Other people die quickly. If
a patient wants a particular person there at the time of death,
arrangements may have to be made to accommodate that person for an
indefinite time. Yet, predicting when a person will die of a disease
is sometimes necessary.? Also ?But predicting how long a particular
person will survive is much more difficult. The best prediction a
doctor can make is based on odds and the degree to which the doctor is
confident in those odds. If the odds of survival for 6 months are 10%,
people should acknowledge the 90% likelihood of dying and should make
plans accordingly.?

http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual_home2/sec01/ch008/ch008b.jsp
and
http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual_home2/sec10/ch139/ch139f.jsp
and
http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual_home2/sec01/ch008/ch008d.jsp#sec01-ch008-ch008d-367


Scroll down about 1/4 of the page to the heading of
MORBIDITY/MORTALITY on this page to find  information on your
question. http://www.emedicine.com/radio/topic394.htm



You can fill in your dad?s geographic data to see where he falls on 
this  NCI chart:
From the National Cancer Institute:
http://cas.popchart.com/cancer

Cancer Treatment Centers of America
http://www.cancercenter.com/liver-cancer/surgical-oncology.cfm

From the University of New Mexico
http://hsc.unm.edu/epiccpro/LIVER.PDF

 Therasphere treatment at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center
http://www.upci.upmc.edu/internet/news/upci_news/2001/070201_liver_outpatient.html

A British study of cancer patient mortality
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0999/7210_319/56000030/p1/article.jhtml


A list of sites for all kinds of information, and emotional support:
http://www.cancerlinks.org/liver.html#EMOTION



Not all patients are candidates for liver transplantation, but if your
dad?s doctor feels this is a possibility, here is a bit of reading on
the topic:

From eMedicine
http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic3510.htm

From the University of Florida
http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2001news/liver.htm


I hope this has helped you deal with your father?s disease and I wish
you all the best outcome possible!

If any part of my answer is unclear, please request an Answer
Clarification before rating. This will allow me to assist you further,
if possible.

Regards,
crabcakes-ga

Searc Terms

Hepatic cancer mortality rate
Life expectancy liver cancer

thank you for being so helpful.

There is a difference between "liver cancer" and cancer in the liver.
Cancers are referred to by the organ of origin: so breast cancer is
breast cancer, whether it's in the breast or has spread to the liver.
Liver cancer, strictly speaking, is cancer which begins in the liver.
It can be cured (rarely) by removing that part of the liver in which
it arises. What you are talking about, metastatic cancer, means it has
spread to the liver from elsewhere, and therefore is nearly always
incurable. The prognosis depends to some degree on the organ from
which it spread: colon cancer in the liver sometimes grows slowly, and
sometimes can have a dramatic response to chemotherapy. Pancreatic
cancer, on the other hand, tends to grow fast and not respond to any
treatment. So it will be important to know, if possible, the original
organ; such knowledge might suggest a treatment plan. On some
occasions, the origin is never found. Generally, people found to have
metastatic cancer in their liver live between 3 and 6 months: there
are occasional startling exceptions, and I've known patients who
responded completely to chemo for metastatic colon cancer and were
disease-free years late. That, in truth, is an extremely rare outcome.
There are ways of treating tumors in the liver which show some promise
for prolonging response with minimal "invasion," including heating or
freezing the tumors with various probes inserted either with xray
guidance or ultrasound during surgery -- "open" or laparascopic.

I'd add one more thing: liver transplantation is not done for
metastatic cancer in the liver,  because since it came from elsewhere,
such a procedure would not remove all the tumor, and would not be
curative. It is sometimes done for primary liver cancer, but that
doesn't sound like what he has.