Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0345904 (liver cancer)
 15,188 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

An 88-year-old white man developed hepatocellular carcinoma forming a large subcutaneous mass by direct invasion of the posterior chest wall. Forty-seven cases of cutaneous metastases from primary liver cancer have been reported. These cutaneous metastases showed protean morphologic features with the face and scalp being the most common sites of involvement. The metastatic lesions may be the presenting sign of the cancer. Average survival, after development of a skin metastasis, was 5 months. Skin metastases from primary liver cancer are being reported more frequently. This is due, in part, to more prolonged survival of liver cancer patients, which allows development of skin metastases, and also due to increased awareness by the clinician.
 ...
PMID:Hepatocellular carcinoma invasive to chest wall. 132 95

Metastasis of human cancer is an organ-selective process that is determined by anatomical and biological factors as well as by specific microenvironmental properties. Dissemination of visceral malignancies to the skin is rather rare and usually occurs in a later stage of the disease. Using statistical approaches, both positive (renal and lung cancers) and negative (pancreatic and liver cancers) organ preferences can be identified in a variety of cancers. While certain cancer types are characterized by random distribution for skin metastasis (liver cancer), a number of cancers demonstrate a colonization preference to the region of origin: lung cancer to the supradiaphragmatic (mostly chest) and colorectal cancers to the infradiaphragmatic (abdominal) skin regions. In certain cases, however, skin metastasis develops more frequently at specific distant locations, as evidenced by the dissemination of renal cancer at the head and neck region. These findings are clinically relevant and useful especially in patients where skin metastasis is the first indication of a malignancy. Nevertheless, it is a strong argument for the predominant role of microenvironmental factors in cancer dissemination. On the other hand, skin metastases of visceral cancers provide a unique model to analyze the pathomechanisms determining organ selectivity, including the organ-specific vascularization, the dermatome-specific innervation, or immunological and developmental factors.
...
PMID:Tumor type-specific and skin region-selective metastasis of human cancers: another example of the "seed and soil" hypothesis. 2363 47