Meds for liver cancer? Same as kidney ?

I started with a kidney tumor, and I am being treated as such even though there aren't any mets left in my kidneys.

My main problem tumor 10cm x 5cm x6cm is agressive and in my liver. there are several more spread around but they are slow growing & small.

I recently read where some Dr's are starting to treat the metastasized site as if it were the primary, which in my case would be to treat it as liver cancer. "Cure" magazine , this months issue pg 23.

My question is can someone give me a quick list of the most common meds used for liver cancer so I can see if there are some that are also used for Kidney. Our primary meds right now are Nexavar, Sutent and Torisel, with Rad001 to be approved soon.

Thanks, Bill

Based on my limited experience and what I've read on the net, the most common treatment for inoperable primary liver cancer seems to be chemoembolization, in which they inject adriamycin (I think I spelled that right) or a similar drug into the arteries supplying the tumor along with one of of several substances which block the flow of blood.  Of course I'm not a doctor but I don't know why this procedure wouldn't work if the tumor metastacised from the kidney.  Adriamycin and its cousins are used for many types of cancer.

They use different kinds of chemotherapy regimens for different types of primary liver cancer; for example hepatocellular carcinoma versus cholangiocarcinoma versus Klatskin's tumor, etc. For HCC they most commonly give Nexavar as systemic chemotherapy. There is also TACE as pointed out in another post here, which is direct injection into the liver of doxorubicin or adriamycin.

 For cholangiocarcinoma, a common chemo regimen is IV gemcitabine with cisplatin, along with Tarceva pill every day. Some doctors are also adding to this regimen Xeloda or Avastin.

A tumor larger than 5 cm is very hard to treat (you say yours is 10 cm). Sometimes they can debulk the tumor with radiofrequency ablation, cryoablation or ethanol ablation, but these are usually more successful with tumors 5 cm or less.

Good luck to you!

Violarob in Texas

 

On 2/21/2009 violarob wrote:

They use different kinds of chemotherapy regimens for different types of primary liver cancer; for example hepatocellular carcinoma versus cholangiocarcinoma versus Klatskin's tumor, etc. For HCC they most commonly give Nexavar as systemic chemotherapy. There is also TACE as pointed out in another post here, which is direct injection into the liver of doxorubicin or adriamycin.

 For cholangiocarcinoma, a common chemo regimen is IV gemcitabine with cisplatin, along with Tarceva pill every day. Some doctors are also adding to this regimen Xeloda or Avastin.

A tumor larger than 5 cm is very hard to treat (you say yours is 10 cm). Sometimes they can debulk the tumor with radiofrequency ablation, cryoablation or ethanol ablation, but these are usually more successful with tumors 5 cm or less.

Good luck to you!

Violarob in Texas

My husband tried Nexavar for 3 months and it quit working, now he is on Evastin ( chemo drug) and trasevar ( ithink it is callee) we go to M D Anderson and have been going every other week for 15 months and he is doing great.