Resolved question:
My father has high speed metastatic cancer that has invaded his liver. He was taken off chemotherapy for a few weeks due to an infection that developed while his immune system was low. He has 2-4 weeks of life left because the cancer grew so fast that it took over most of the liver and started obstructing blood flow to the liver.
I looked into live-donor liver transplantation, which is done in Arizona and Minnesota. As I am his son, I would be willing to donate a generous portion of my still young and healthy liver in order to try and save his life.
My uncle (who is in charge of his medical care) stated that his doctors considered liver section removal and regeneration but due to the nature of his cancer it would just invade whatever part regenerated quickly.
I'm a biochemistry student so I'm not completely aloof in this discussion. In my mind, that makes sense for his own liver trying to regenerate whilst cancer is present, since it would basically be "at the gates" of each regenerating portion of his liver. But what if some or most of his cancerous liver was removed and a generous section of my healthy liver was introduced instead, and he was then reintroduced to chemotherapy as quickly as possibly to combat the spread of the cancer to the healthy portions of the liver?
Could this allow that part of the liver to regenerate quickly enough to make the chemo treatments more effective, and could this give him a shot at defeating this cancer? Or is his situation too far gone for this to be an option.
Thank you,
CCM
Submitted:
4 Days
Category:
Oncologist
Dear,
Thank you for your query at DoctorSpring.com
Liver resection / transplant can be optional only in few types of cancer even metastatic. But you need to give me complete details of the disease, where the primary is, which other organs are the disease, how bad is his liver functions, is he jaundiced, etc..
Since you have written, he has limited longevity, I assume that the disease status is bad.
Please send me the complete reports so as to guide you better
Regards.
Primary disease started in the colon but moved into the liver. It is now primarly in the liver, but it may still be in the colon (although they removed part of his colon and the real serious cancer is now in the liver).
His liver function is so bad that the doctors said if he were to drink alcohol he could be dead within thirty hours. I do believe he is jaundiced but I do not know to what extent.
This is really a bad disease and surgery is not feasible. Did the doctors try some mild chemo with cetuximab ?
I would like to let you know that at times chemo may not be appropriate when jaundice is high.
Regards.