Seangim, a 22-year-old girl from the beautiful capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, has a beloved husband and a warm home. Looking to the distant golden spire of the temple, she sank into thinking. Were it not liver cancer, she would be living in this shadowy and always spring-like beautiful world happily and forever.

In Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou presented the patient with moon cakes.

　　Dull pain in abdomen——Chronic hepatitis B has become liver cancer

　　Seangim has had chronic hepatitis B for eight years. Starting from February, 2011, she occasionally felt pain in the upper abdomen and an egg-size lump can be touched there. Since it was not very painful and no enlargement happened, Seangim did not go to hospital for examination timely, thinking that it would disappear by itself. However, as it gradually grew up and enlarged rapidly in August, she went to Vietnam for examination and was suspected with liver cancer. To get more systemic and professional diagnosis and treatment, she finally came to Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou, China.

A picture of Seangim and her husband (the second one from the left) with doctors of Modern cancer Hospital Guangzhou

　　22-year-old sweet young girl as she was, she was unexpectedly attached by a tumor as huge as 8×11×14CM

　　After she was admitted to the hospital, a CT examination showed that there was a cancerous lesion in the left lobe of her liver and a lump as huge as 8×11×14CM in the gap region between liver and stomach, with enlargement of retroperitoneal lymph nodes and nodules shadow in the right middle lobe under the chest. She then was diagnosed with primary liver cancer.

　　Dr. Mei Miao from Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou pointed out that, the incidence of liver cancer in youths are rising recently, because of all kinds of factors, including environmental deterioration, gene inheritance, hepatitis B virus infection, dietary habit and emotional depression, etc. Seangim has had hepatitis B for 8 years, and both her mother and brother are hepatitis B patients. Due to her strong toleration to the pain, she failed to notice the seriousness of her condition and therefore missed the best time for treatment.

The 8×11×14CM liver tumor

　　Interventional therapy has obvious clinical effect in treating liver cancer

　　Due to the huge size of the tumor, surgery was not practical, for it might cause rupture of the tumor or liver capsule and result in fatal hemorrhage. Experts from Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou decided to perform minimally invasive embolization, which is to insert a micro-catheter into the feeding blood vessel of tumor and infuse drugs to the tumor, so as to block the blood and nutrient supply of the tumor, without causing much affection to other normal blood vessels and cells. The CT scan performed three weeks after the embolization showed that the huge tumor has shrunk to 6×7CM, meaning the treatment has gained obvious effect.

　　From then on, shinning smiles came back to Seangim’s face. She came back to her beautiful hometown Phnom Penh with her husband, as well as the gratefulness to Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou.

*Surgery, in addition to the appropriate chemotherapy and radiotherapy, are effective in treating early cancer, but certain patients in late stage of cancer may not be tolerate surgery well as they can be relatively weak. A combination of carefully planned minimally invasive therapy, chemotherapy or radiotherapy can effectively reduce the side effects and discomfort of treatment and may help patient get better efficacy.