Study on therapeutics adopted after occlusion of intraarterial reservoir in patients with liver tumor

Over the last 5 years, we experienced thirty-nine patients with liver tumors undergoing implantation of an intraarterial reservoir through the gastroduodenal artery. Nine of the 39 patients had hepatocellular carcinomas, while the rest had metastatic liver tumors. In 32 patients, intraarterial chemotherapy via an implanted reservoir was discontinued either because of death in 20 patients with an average survival period of 11.7 months or because of occlusion of an intraarterial line in 12 patients with an average treatment period of 20.2 months. Regarding treatment modalities adopted for intraarterial therapy, transcatheter arterial embolization, surgical resection, microwave tumor coagulation, ethanol injection therapy, and a subselective intraarterial chemotherapy were performed in 3 patients with hepatocellular carcinomas. All of them survived more than 2 years after disuse of the reservoir. Out of 5 patients with metastatic liver tumors of colorectal cancer, one patient underwent additional surgical resection, two patients had no therapy who survived only two or three months, and two patients were still alive without additional therapies. Of four patients with metastatic liver tumors, 3 from breast cancer and one from leiomyosarcoma of stomach were treated with systemic chemotherapy or subselective intraarterial chemotherapy combined with radiation therapy. The average survival period of these 12 patients was 16.2 months, and 7 of them are still alive.