Treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma.

As a result of progresses in surveillance programs and improvements in diagnosis, an increased number of hepatocellular carcinomas are diagnosed in early stage, when effective treatment options are available. Surgical resection, liver transplantation and radiofrequency ablation are considered potentially curative treatments and may be successfully applied when the disease is limited. In intermediate and advanced stages only palliative therapies can be employed and chemoembolization and the oral dual inhibitor sorafenib are considered the treatments of choice. Future directions will explore the role of sorafenib in the adjuvant setting, the addition of sorafenib to chemoembolization procedures and the combination of sorafenib with chemotherapeutic agents or other biological drugs in advanced stages of disease.