How fast can HCC spread

EllaHB

My husband was told he had HCC about 2 months ago, He has chirissos from Hep c. they put him on Nexavar, wanting to treat the tumors but his bilirubin was too high. It was a 6 but after juicing beets and radishes I have gotten the billirubun down to a 3.5 they said he is now a candidate for the Radiofrequency ablation. he cannot have the consult appt til Dec 4 over two weeks. That is just for the consult. He has 2 tumors at 2.3cm and 3.3 cm, I am worried that the cancer will spread or grow by time we have the appt, anybody have any info?
Thanks and God Bless

XtremediverHCC

HCC spread time
The information that you are looking for is called the "doubling" time and it varies from my knowledge. I went from no detectable liver tumors during one MRI period to one that was 3.5cm (and another that did not show up on MRI) at 3 months. I had cleared the Hep-C virus already and was just receiving MRI's every 3 months for the earliest detection. I was treated with liver resection surgery and during that process the 2nd smaller tumor (1.1cm) was found. My first detection was in early December of 2006 and I did not have the surgery until one month later. I (personally) would not be overly concerned about the short period of time that you need to wait. My thought is that it will not grow that fast to where it becomes untreatable. A bigger concern would be if these tumors were in different areas of the Liver and/or on the portal vein. HCC thrives on blood and the portal vein supplies about 75% of the blood at the Liver-that is where my first larger tumor was. My 2nd recurrence of HCC was not on the portal vein and was discovered 3 years later and treated with RFA. It has been almost 3 years since my last recurrence and in about 3 weeks I will have another MRI. I hope this helps and I will keep you and your husband in my thoughts and prayers - please post the outcome of that consult.

Jenna2680

Hcc growth
Hi. My dad has HCC and just completed his mapping today for radioembolization in a few weeks from now. From my understanding the radiologist told us it take about 9-12 months for liver rumors to double in size. I believe it is a slow growing cancer. My dad has two 2 cm tumors on either side of his liver and several little ones near the middle. I think 2-3 cm are considered small medium tumors. My dad also has hep c induced cirrhosis and his liver is horribly scarred. But his bilirubin is only around 1.5. However he does have bouts with other cirrhosis related complications such as varicies that have bled really bad, ascites, but no issues yet with jaundice or HE. Good luck to you, please keep in contact. Where are you located? Is your husband a candidate for transplant? My dad isn't because he has 2 other primary cancers, if you can imagine that!

EllaHB

Jenna2680 said:

Hcc growth
Hi. My dad has HCC and just completed his mapping today for radioembolization in a few weeks from now. From my understanding the radiologist told us it take about 9-12 months for liver rumors to double in size. I believe it is a slow growing cancer. My dad has two 2 cm tumors on either side of his liver and several little ones near the middle. I think 2-3 cm are considered small medium tumors. My dad also has hep c induced cirrhosis and his liver is horribly scarred. But his bilirubin is only around 1.5. However he does have bouts with other cirrhosis related complications such as varicies that have bled really bad, ascites, but no issues yet with jaundice or HE. Good luck to you, please keep in contact. Where are you located? Is your husband a candidate for transplant? My dad isn't because he has 2 other primary cancers, if you can imagine that!

Thanks
Thanks for getting back to me. Over the holiday my husband had to be hospitalized and his ascities drained. His ammonia was at 90 while there, and thats at taking lactlouse 3 times a day.

He is a liver transplant candidate but he cannot be offered livers again until one of his tumors is "downsized" The 3.3 cm tumor needs to be a 3 I think its one tumor under 5 cm or up to 3 tumors under 3 cm so his Insurance put him on hold due to the size being to large. I am scared he is going to die, I knew that the liver transplant was a long shot, but throw the cancer in and it seems like we need two miracles. We live in CA and we have to little boys 5 and 8 I dont even know if I should tell my kids that there dad is sick, I dont want to scare them.

EllaHB

Jenna2680 said:

Hcc growth
Hi. My dad has HCC and just completed his mapping today for radioembolization in a few weeks from now. From my understanding the radiologist told us it take about 9-12 months for liver rumors to double in size. I believe it is a slow growing cancer. My dad has two 2 cm tumors on either side of his liver and several little ones near the middle. I think 2-3 cm are considered small medium tumors. My dad also has hep c induced cirrhosis and his liver is horribly scarred. But his bilirubin is only around 1.5. However he does have bouts with other cirrhosis related complications such as varicies that have bled really bad, ascites, but no issues yet with jaundice or HE. Good luck to you, please keep in contact. Where are you located? Is your husband a candidate for transplant? My dad isn't because he has 2 other primary cancers, if you can imagine that!

Thanks
Thanks for getting back to me. Over the holiday my husband had to be hospitalized and his ascities drained. His ammonia was at 90 while there, and thats at taking lactlouse 3 times a day.

He is a liver transplant candidate but he cannot be offered livers again until one of his tumors is "downsized" The 3.3 cm tumor needs to be a 3 I think its one tumor under 5 cm or up to 3 tumors under 3 cm so his Insurance put him on hold due to the size being to large. I am scared he is going to die, I knew that the liver transplant was a long shot, but throw the cancer in and it seems like we need two miracles. We live in CA and we have to little boys 5 and 8 I dont even know if I should tell my kids that there dad is sick, I dont want to scare them.

LISAmaried

EllaHB said:

Thanks
Thanks for getting back to me. Over the holiday my husband had to be hospitalized and his ascities drained. His ammonia was at 90 while there, and thats at taking lactlouse 3 times a day.

He is a liver transplant candidate but he cannot be offered livers again until one of his tumors is "downsized" The 3.3 cm tumor needs to be a 3 I think its one tumor under 5 cm or up to 3 tumors under 3 cm so his Insurance put him on hold due to the size being to large. I am scared he is going to die, I knew that the liver transplant was a long shot, but throw the cancer in and it seems like we need two miracles. We live in CA and we have to little boys 5 and 8 I dont even know if I should tell my kids that there dad is sick, I dont want to scare them.

It has been my understanding
It has been my understanding that HCC does not generally spread to other parts of the body. But I am not sure if that was your question...Have your husbands doctors talked at all about therasphere treatment? My father underwent the treatment about a month and a half ago. He had wonderful results. 60% of the tumor died and the other 40% was dying. The best part is the tumor that was on the portal vein is the part that died already. Although they did find a small tumor on the other side of the liver, they believe it was there in the other scans as a spot, but mainly blocked by the 9cm tumor. HE is taking nexavar to treat that. He feel great and drove from florida to michigan to see me and my boys for the holiday. I hope you and your husband find one of the treatments that will work best for him. I will pray for you and your family. As far as kids, you might want to consider talking with them, Kids usually know a lot more than we adults givve them credit for...I am so sorry you are going through this. I wish there was more to say, I just want to tell my fathers story as a source of hope for people. There are good treatments out there and there is hope. You will be in my thoughts,please contact me if you need a shoulder to lean on. It is tuff , my mom has cancer too, and it is soo hard sometimes to face all of it.

XtremediverHCC

LISAmaried said:

It has been my understanding
It has been my understanding that HCC does not generally spread to other parts of the body. But I am not sure if that was your question...Have your husbands doctors talked at all about therasphere treatment? My father underwent the treatment about a month and a half ago. He had wonderful results. 60% of the tumor died and the other 40% was dying. The best part is the tumor that was on the portal vein is the part that died already. Although they did find a small tumor on the other side of the liver, they believe it was there in the other scans as a spot, but mainly blocked by the 9cm tumor. HE is taking nexavar to treat that. He feel great and drove from florida to michigan to see me and my boys for the holiday. I hope you and your husband find one of the treatments that will work best for him. I will pray for you and your family. As far as kids, you might want to consider talking with them, Kids usually know a lot more than we adults givve them credit for...I am so sorry you are going through this. I wish there was more to say, I just want to tell my fathers story as a source of hope for people. There are good treatments out there and there is hope. You will be in my thoughts,please contact me if you need a shoulder to lean on. It is tuff , my mom has cancer too, and it is soo hard sometimes to face all of it.

The spread of HCC outside of
The spread of HCC outside of the Liver is not good. (What cancer is, though?) Extra-hepatic HCC is the term which refers to this condition and while it does happen, it is much less frequent than you might expect. Generally it spreads to the Lungs the most often and then the Lymph-nodes and third most often to the bones. It can however, spread and that is not to be taken lightly. If this happens, it is my understanding that liver transplant is then off the table of treatment options and generally only palliative care is given.

EllaHB

XtremediverHCC said:

The spread of HCC outside of
The spread of HCC outside of the Liver is not good. (What cancer is, though?) Extra-hepatic HCC is the term which refers to this condition and while it does happen, it is much less frequent than you might expect. Generally it spreads to the Lungs the most often and then the Lymph-nodes and third most often to the bones. It can however, spread and that is not to be taken lightly. If this happens, it is my understanding that liver transplant is then off the table of treatment options and generally only palliative care is given.

...
We went to UCLA yesterday, His bilirubin was at 5.5, the doctor said that it needs to be under a 4 to have it treated RFA and that he needs every cell he has in his liver to live. So waiting to hear what the next step is since they cannot treat it. The good news is that there is only one tumor the doctor felt confidante that one spot was just a lesion. I know that the 3.3 cm tumor has been biopsied and came back HCC but the other area he said is just a lesion. So hopefully now he can be placed back on the liver transplant list and maybe we will get lucky. Thanks so much for all the prayers and well wishes. I know the power of prayer works. This last March my husband hit his head he had really low platelets due to advanced liver desiease and his brain started to bleed. He had a very large brain bleed and I was told to put him on a morphine drip because he was dying. I never did and many were praying for him and he lived. First they said he would die, then they said he would never walk or talk, then never drive a car, and he is a live and well and walking and talking and driving, and i know that it was god, love and prayer. Can you believe after all that and finally get him home and then we get the cancer diagnosis. Life is very funny sometimes...