Liver Cancer Signs | Liver Cancer Symptoms
Primary liver cancer or hepatoma starts from the liver substance itself, either the liver cells, or the supporting tissues such as the vessels, connective tissues, or bile ducts.
Early liver cancer symptoms may be be confined to just a feeling of discomfort below the lower ribs on the right side, usually to the front. This discomfort may be constant or be there on and off. It may be worsened on deep breathing or movement. Later there may be pain.
Slightly later liver cancer symptoms may come on because of pressure symptoms such as jaundice or deepening yellowness of the eyes, skin and tongue as a result of some obstruction of the bile ducts.
There may be general symptoms of cancer experienced by the patient such as weight loss, anemia, tiredness.
Even later the symptoms are those due to spread of the liver cancer, such as bone pains due to spread to the ribs, arm and leg bones, or backache due to spead to the spine. Headache may be due to spread to the brain. The patient may cough due to spread to the lungs. Sometimes he may complain of an increasing girth of his abdomen due to formation of ascitic fluid because of spread to the peritoneum or a failing liver causing low protein production.
Sometimes cancer of the liver may not be primary (i.e. arising from the liver) but secondary, that is, it is spread from elsewhere in the body to the liver. The liver tends to be the ultimate organ to which veins from other parts of the body, especially the abdominal organs, drain, so this is a very common site for cancers arising from elsewhere in the body such as the stomach and intestines. Thus you may find a person coming in with symptoms suggestive of a cancer elsewhere in the body, for example, bloody stools due to colonic cancer.
LIver cancer signs in the early stages are usually mild. One may find some tenderness in the right lower ribs only. In later stages other signs will be obvious, such as a mass palpable below the right lower ribs, jaundice, weight loss, generalised itchiness due to the jaundice, distended abdomen due to the ascites, swollen legs, etc.
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