Chemotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses drugs to kill cancer cells. Chemotherapy works by stopping or slowing the growth of cancer cells, which grow and divide quickly. The drugs can be administered orally, through intravenous lines, or in other ways. Chemotherapy can be used alone as a cancer treatment, or along with other treatments like radiation therapy and surgery. Each drug in a chemotherapy regimen is carefully selected to target the specific type and stage of the cancer being treated.

Embolization therapy involves a targeted procedure in which substances are injected into blood vessels to try to block or reduce the blood flow to cancer cells in certain organs. This therapy is often used to treat liver and colorectal cancers. Embolization allows doctors to treat metastatic tumors, while limiting the effects of treatment on the healthy parts of the organ, as well as the rest of the body.

At Providence, our top-ranked specialists use immunotherapy to treat various cancers. Immunotherapy is a cancer treatment that uses substances made from living organisms to help your immune system fight cancer. As part of its normal function, the immune system detects and destroys abnormal cells to prevent the growth of more cancers. There are several types of immunotherapy treatments, including T-cell transfer therapy, monoclonal antibodies, treatment vaccines, and more.

Liver resection surgery is one of the best liver cancer treatment options. At Providence, our experienced and highly skilled specialists recommend this treatment option if your liver is healthy and there’s only one existing tumor that has not advanced into your blood vessels. Doctors will physically remove up to half of your liver and leave the rest of the organ to function normally. Since this is a major surgery, it can take between four and eight weeks to fully recover. 

MRCP is a type of MRI diagnostic screening procedure used mainly in diagnosing possible conditions or disease in the liver, pancreas, gallbladder, and bile ducts. Like a standard MRI scan, the patient lies on an MRI bed and slides into the machine for the exam. MRCP uses a harmless magnetic field to produce clear, high-resolution images.

Similar to liver resection surgery, a partial hepatectomy is a surgical procedure where a portion of the liver is removed. It’s widely known as one of the best options to cure liver cancer. Our experienced and highly skilled oncologists at Providence remove cancer tumors and parts of the liver—and then leave the organ to function normally. This procedure is considered a minimally invasive surgery and can take anywhere between two and four hours.

Radiation therapy is a cancer treatment that uses high doses of radiation to destroy cancer cells or slow their growth by damaging their DNA. When that happens, the cancer cells stop dividing or die completely, and then get broken down by the body. There are two main types of radiation therapy, external beam and internal. It usually takes days or weeks of treatment for cancer cells to die. After that, the cells will keep dying for weeks or months after radiation therapy ends.

Radioembolization is a minimally invasive cancer treatment for some types of liver cancer that involves delivering radioactive particles directly to the tumor. As the particles lodge within the tumor, they emit radiation that can eliminate cancer cells. It is often recommended for those with early-stage liver cancer or with other types that would not respond well to other therapies. It typically causes fewer, and milder, side effects than some other treatments like chemotherapy.

Embolization is a treatment that blocks or slows blood flow to tissues or an organ. In cancer treatment, it can be used to block the flow of blood to cancerous cells so they die. When the material used to block the blood supply also delivers chemotherapy drugs to the tumor, it is called chemoembolization. Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is a specific type of chemoembolization that blocks the hepatic artery to treat liver cancer.

Liver cancer tumors can grow new blood vessels, which get most of their blood supply from the hepatic artery, while the rest of the liver tissue gets blood from the portal vein. Doctors can block the hepatic artery to cut off the blood supply to the tumor without affecting the rest of the liver, as long as blood is flowing toward the liver in the portal vein. To do the treatment, doctors will insert a small catheter into the femoral artery (at the top of the leg, near the groin), until it reaches the tumor. Then the doctor will inject a material that will block the hepatic artery, stopping the tumor's blood flow.

Thermal ablation, also known as cryoablation, radiofrequency and ablation, is used to treat difficult cancers. These include serious cases of breast, kidney, liver, prostate, thyroid, and pancreatic cancers. At Providence, we recommend using thermal ablation when surgery to remove a tumor is not feasible. During the procedure, a catheter or needle is inserted into the body and carefully guided to the specific area where cancer is located. Doctors most often use CT scanning or ultrasound imaging to guide these tools. The tips of these tools use either radiofrequency energy, liquid nitrogen, electric currents, or heat to destroy (ablate) the cancer cells within the tumor.