Dear Mr Engy,
How are you? I am so sorry to hear about your father's diagnosis.
Hepatitis C and
Cirrhosis are both risk factors for development of cancer of the liver (HCC). The treatment options for someone with HCC depends on multiple factors 1) Patient condition (age, physical fitness) 2) whether the liver is healthy or not (normal liver vs cirrhotic liver) and 3) when patient has cirrhosis, the clinical stage of cirrhosis (early, asymptomatic vs late stage cirrhosis with fluid in belly). Normally upto 70% of liver can be surgically removed safely without any problems for the patient. But in a patient with cirrhosis, only 30-40% can be removed, that too, only if the patient is asymptomatic and his blood tests are normal. In a patient with abnormal blood tests or fluid in belly or
portal hypertension (vomitting of blood), then surgical resection is totally contrindicated.
In case of your father, I would like to know more about his blood tests, whether he has any symptoms and also the size of the HCC. Based on these the treatment options may include surgical resection, Radio frequency ablation (Burning of the
tumor using probes), TACE (blocking the
artery supplying the tumor) or even
liver transplantation (age and previous
heart attack make him a poor candidate.
Please do contact me with his blood and imaging reports so I can guide you to the best possible treatment - rxsuresh@gmail.com.
Hope this helps and hope your dad gets to feel better.