The key issue is as to whether the liver cancer has spread outside the liver and if within the liver whether it is operable. This latter decision obviously is dependent on the extent of the growth within the liver but also on the normality of the liver that will be left behind any such operation – i.e. in a cirrhotic patient, the liver that is being resected in order to obtain a surgical clearance around a hepatocellular carcinoma may be critical in terms of providing the patient with enough surviving liver function to live.
Scans will provide most of these details but the doctor may well require an angiogram to examine the vascular (blood vessel) supply to the region before deciding on operability.
