Secondary liver cancer (which may also be called metastatic liver cancer) means that seedlings of tumour have spread to the liver from a cancer in another part of the body (this is known as the primary cancer).

Secondary liver cancer is, unfortunately a very common problem. It is far commoner than primary liver cancer (where the cancer starts in the liver, rather than spreading to the liver from elsewhere) which is quite rare in this country.

Many different types of cancer will often spread to form secondary cancers, or metastases, in the liver. Among the commoner forms of cancer which may send seedlings to the liver are lung cancer, breast cancer and bowel cancer.

When these tumours do travel to the liver the cells which make up the secondary cancers are the same as those in the primary growths. This means that if, for example, a bowel cancer spreads to the liver then the secondaries will be made up of bowel cancer cells and not liver cancer cells. Similarly if a breast cancer spread to the liver, then the secondaries would be made up of breast cancer cells and not liver cancer cells.

Since the cells in the secondary cancers are the same as those in the primary growth they will be sensitive to the same types of treatment as the primary cancer.

The treatment for liver secondaries is usually based on chemotherapy. So this means that the type of chemotherapy that will be needed depends on where the secondaries have come from. If they have come from a breast cancer, then chemotherapy drugs which are effective against breast cancer will be needed. In the same way, if the secondaries have come from a bowel cancer then chemotherapy drugs which are used for bowel tumours will be used to treat the liver metastases.

So many different types of chemotherapy are used in the treatment of liver secondaries depending on where the primary tumour was that gave rise to those secondaries.