Hepatocellular carcinoma picture Hepatocellular carcinoma accounts for 80% to 90% of all liver cancers. It occurs more often in men than women and occurs mostly in people 50 to 60 years old. The disease is more common in parts of Africa and Asia than in North and South America and Euro The picture above shows hepatocellular cancer on the liver.

 More information about Hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma is a cancer that arises from liver cells. It is different from 'liver cancer' that has spread to the liver from elsewhere.

It is important that the reader does not confuse the term ‘liver cancer’, when referring to secondary cancer spreading to the liver, with primary cancer of the liver. In the Western world, the occurrence of metastatic cancer in the liver far exceeds the incidence of primary liver cancer and such problems in the liver are treated by the methods used to control the primary cancer. That is to say that if a patient has developed secondary breast cancer in the liver then it is treated with chemotherapy to which breast cancer is sensitive and not as a primary liver cancer would be.

Hepatocellular carcinoma is a true carcinoma but usually an aggressive one with a high mitotic rate (i.e. many cells capable of division at any one time). In the most commonly encountered form, the microscopoist can recognise the attempts by the tumour cells to form the trabeculae that are characteristic of normal liver histology, the microtrabecular variant.