Main description:

Understanding Liver Cancer is a concise and up-to-date review, which discusses diagnosis, management, patient care, current and emerging therapies, and useful resources that clinicians can provide to their patients. Busy healthcare professionals who want a quick review of liver cancer as well as a summary of current therapies will benefit from this succinct text.

Contents:

1. Introduction to hepatocellular carcinoma
-Introduction, incidence and geography, causes of hepatocellular carcinoma, prevention, surveillance screening, biology of human hepatocellular carcinoma.

2. Clinical disease evaluation
- Diagnosis A: Radiology, Diagnosis B: Blood tests, tumor markers, Diagnosis C: Biopsy - a debate, assessment of tumour extent for treatment planning: staging classifications, the new patient assessment.

3. Management of hepatocellular carcinoma
- General treatment choices, therapies with curative intent, non-curative therapies, systemic drugs, assessment of responses to therapy: what do tumor size responses signify?

4. The whole patient setting
- Therapy decisions for the individual patient: importance of a multidisciplinary team approach, psychosocial considerations, family, support groups.

5. New directions

6. Addendum
- Abbreviations, extended.