Pediatric Liver Tumors Treatment Options

After liver tumor diagnosis, we create tailored treatment plans for each patient. Our multidisciplinary team of pediatric surgeons, oncologists, radiologists, and pathologists have decades of experience treating patients with liver tumors. They work together to coordinate every aspect of care. Treatment options can include chemotherapy and surgery, depending on the size of the tumor and other factors.

Generally, surgery can remove small tumors up front, while larger tumors are often treated with chemotherapy first to shrink them before operating. Sometimes, surgery to remove the tumor will also require removing part of the liver—liver tissue can regenerate—or a liver transplant if the tumor involves the whole liver.

Other treatments may include:

• Chemoembolization: Killing a tumor by injecting tiny beads into the blood vessels that supply the tumor. The beads block the vessels, so the tumor can’t get any oxygen and dies.
• Chemical injection: Killing smaller tumors by injecting a chemical directly into the tumor.
• Radiofrequency ablation: Killing a tumor by inserting a probe to send radio waves into it.

Patients sometimes require a liver transplant, and they will be in the best hands at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. Our Pediatric Transplant Center is one of the top-performing and busiest pediatric liver transplant centers in the United States, and our patient outcomes are among the best in the nation.

Clinical trials

Our pediatric liver tumor specialists are international leaders in the field. Our pediatric oncologists participate in innovative clinical trials investigating new liver tumor drugs and dosages. And Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford was the only hospital in the U.S. to offer a groundbreaking clinical trial to treat high-risk hepatoblastoma with a new combination of chemotherapy and surgery that had the best remission rates of any hepatoblastoma treatment ever studied. Now that the trial is complete, this therapy is available to our patients.

We are also working to improve patients’ quality of life during and after treatment. We were the only children’s hospital in Northern California to offer a study testing how to prevent hearing loss in patients caused by one of the most effective liver-tumor-fighting drugs. The results of that trial now help us reduce the risk of hearing loss in our patients.