Liver Cancer - Causes & Types

Cancer is a disease in which certain body cells go out of control and start multiplying rapidly of their own accord. This uncontrolled growth becomes a tumor and eventually, if unchecked, will interfere with the working of a vital organ or organs and cause death.

Liver cancer is to be feared being the eighth most common cancer in the world. Your liver plays an important detoxification role for your body. If your liver breaks down, digestion of your fats via bile cannot take place.Filtering of your blood to remove drugs, waste and toxins can also be severely affected.
Getting liver damage or liver cancer would be disastrous as it means that all these important functions cannot be performed. In the worst case scenerio, liver cancer can result in death.

Causes of Liver cancer

The two main causes of Liver cancer are: Excessive consumption of alcoholic drinks and occurrence of infections like Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. It’s unfortunate to note that though a number of people know that alcohol can increase the risk of Liver cancer, they still don’t cut down on alcohol.

Liver Cancer - Types

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Types of Liver cancer

Liver cancer is usually a secondary development. Tumors of the lung, colon, pancreas, or stomach can spread to the liver. Tumors of the liver are either benign or malignant. On a broad basis, we can classify liver cancer as primary liver cancer and secondary cancer. When cancer originates in the liver itself, it is called as primary liver cancer(hepatoma); also called "malignant hepatoma". Liver cancer is known as secondary liver cancer when it originates in some other part of the body and then spreads to liver (e.g. due to proximity of liver to the place where cancer originated in the body). Hepatoma and bile duct cancer are the two main types of liver cancer.

The liver is the largest internal organ in the body. It is also known as primary liver cancer or hepatoma and hepatocellular carcinoma is a cancer arising from the liver. The liver performs several vital functions. It processes and stores many of the nutrients absorbed from the intestine. It also makes some of the clotting factors needed to stop bleeding from a cut or injury. Hemangioma (he-man-ge-O-muh) is the most common type of benign liver tumor. It starts in blood vessels and Hepatic adenomas are benign tumors that start from the main type of liver cells (hepatocytes). Women have a much higher chance of having one of these tumors if they take birth control pills, although this is rare. Stopping the pills can cause the tumor to shrink. Hepatic adenomascancer begins in many spots throughout the liver and is not confined to a single tumor. This is most often seen in people with liver cirrhosis and is the most common pattern seen in the United States.