Hepatocellular carcinoma: An update of risk factors, staging and treatment

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the 5th most frequent death cause in the world. Numerous risk factors provoke HCC progress including aflatoxins, chronic alcohol consumption, HBV, HCV, porphyria’s and even contraceptives. Early stage diagnosis and treatment of HCC is still a dilemma. Several invasive and non-invasive techniques are frequently used for its detection. Different biomarkers are also used for early diagnosis of HCC. HCC has been categorized into several stages depending upon the nature of tumor. Several treatment strategies are used for HCC including the surgical and non-surgical methods. Surgical methods are liver transplant and surgical resection while non-surgical are ablation, percutaneous ablation, laser thermal ablation, radiofrequency ablation, trans-arterial chemoembolization, hormonal therapy and chemotherapy. This review is focused on multiple risk factors of HCC, disease epidemiology in different countries, different staging systems used for diagnosis and various treatment interventions including surgical and non-surgical for HCC treatment.