As a treatment for liver cancer, chemoembolization may be used to deliver a relatively large dose of chemotherapy directly to a tumor. Chemoembolization is performed by placing a small catheter from the blood vessel in your groin into the artery that supplies blood to the liver. The procedure attacks the cancer in two ways. First, it delivers a very high concentration of chemotherapy, or anti-cancer drugs, directly into the tumor, without exposing the entire body to the effects of those drugs. Second, the procedure cuts off blood supply to the tumor, trapping the anti-cancer drugs at the site and depriving the tumor of the oxygen and nutrients it needs to grow.
The liver is unique because it has two blood supplies - an artery (the hepatic artery) and a large vein (the portal vein). The normal liver receives about 75 percent of its blood supply through the portal vein and only 25 percent through the hepatic artery. But when a tumor grows in the liver, it receives almost all of its blood supply from the hepatic artery.
Chemotherapy drugs injected into the hepatic artery reach the tumor very directly, sparing most of the healthy liver tissue. Then, when the artery is blocked, the blood is no longer supplied to the tumor, while the liver continues to be supplied by blood from the portal vein. This also permits a higher concentration of the anti-cancer drugs to be in contact with the tumor for a longer period of time.
Chemoembolization is most beneficial to patients whose disease is predominately limited to the liver, whether the tumor began in the liver or spread to the liver (metastasized) from another organ.
Cancers that may be treated by chemoembolization include:
- Hepatoma or hepatocellular carcinoma (primary liver cancer)
- Metastasis (spread) to the liver from:
- colon cancer
- breast cancer
- carcinoid tumors and other neuroendocrine tumors
- islet cell tumors of the pancreas
- ocular melanoma
- sarcomas
- other vascular primary tumors in the body
Source: RadiologyInfo.org