Liver tumour – the most common tumour of the liver is a metastasis.
Metastases affecting the liver from other (mainly stomach- and bowel) tumours are twenty times more common than tumours that originate in the liver itself.
The liverdisease can be either diffuse, affecting the whole liver, or focal and circumscribed. The livertumours are focal diseases, which are divided into benign and malignant lesions.
Benign tumours are very common: they occur more often in women, and most of them are associated with taking contraceptives. The three most common benign lesions are the vascular tumour (haemangioma), the true liver cell tumour (adenoma) and focal nodular hyperplasia (a structure that actually contains the liver's own tissue elements, but in different proportions from healthy liver tissue).
Tumour-like lesions in the liver may be regenerative nodules, single or multiple cysts, echinococcus (parasitic) cysts, abscesses caused by infection, and haematomas caused by injury.
The liverprimary malignant tumours of note are liver cell cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma) and bile duct cancer (cholangiocellular carcinoma). Because both diseases cause few symptoms, they are usually diagnosed at an advanced stage and therefore have a very poor prognosis.
