The Facts
The liver, the largest gland in the body, plays a vital role is keeping
us alive. Its many functions include storing vitamins and nutrients, producing
proteins used for blood clotting, and creating bile used for digestion. It also
breaks down and it filters out toxins from the blood.
Two types of cancer affect the liver:
- Primary cancer first begins in the liver and may spread to other
organs. The most common primary cancer is hepatocellular carcinoma.
- Metastasized cancer of the liver comes originally from another part
of the body. Cancer cells can easily travel from another affected organ to
the liver because of the role the liver plays in filtering the blood. The most common
cancers that spread to the liver are from the colon,
pancreas, stomach,
lung, and breast.
The average person diagnosed with liver cancer is over 60 years old. In the United States, about 18,000 people are diagnosed every year with liver cancer, and well over half of them are men.