Specific Liver Lesions
Liver Metastases
Many cancers metastasize to the liver, from virtually all primary sites in the body, particularly those of gastrointestinal tract origin. While metastatic disease in the liver may represent an incurable situation, there are exceptions. For example, surgical removal of liver metastases from colorectal primary sites has produced reported 5-year survival rates as high as 58% in the MD Anderson Hospital surgical series, with long term survival seen in patients with greater than 3 lesions as well as those with more limited disease, as long as all metastatic disease is removed (4, 5, 6).
Other ablative therapies including radiofrequency ablation (heating the tumor) and cryotherapy (freezing the tumor) have also produced extended survival in some patients with liver metastases, but compared with surgical removal, the 5-year disease free survival rate appears lower and the tumor recurrence rate in the liver appears higher (4,6,9,10,13,14). Scientifically rigorous comparison of surgical removal versus non-surgical ablative therapies has not been reported.
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