Teaching Points
- Evidence suggests that certain patients with liver cirrhosis should be screened for HCC
- Screening involves 6-12mnthly ultrasounds
- alpha feto protein has NO role in screening for HCC in patients with liver cirrhosis. It does have a role in confirmatory testing, once a lesion has been detected by US
- Once a lesion has been indentified on US, further investigation is dictated by the size of the lesion
- Biopsy of a lesion has inherent risks - bleeding and possible seeding of the needle tract
- Several staging systems have been proposed. The Barcelona-Clinic Liver Cancer system is the most commonly used, as it can predict survival
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