Role of Sonograpic Evaluation Via Doppler and Elastography in Evaluation of Hepatic Neoplasms Post TACE With Correlation With Modified RECIST Criteria.

The incidence of liver cancer is one of the highest in the world. In Egypt HCC is the forth common cancer and represents up to 90% of all liver malignancies. Where it is responsible for 33.63% and 13.54% of all cancers in males and females respectively.

Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is recommended as the first-line treatment in early stage patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or as a palliative treatment modality in advanced patients with unresctable tumor which was known to increase survival rate. However, tumor control usually requires multiple TACE interventions due to the presence of residual and recurrent lesions.

Currently the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) guideline was proposed as a method for measuring treatment response based on tumor shrinkage, which is a valuable measure of antitumor activity of cytotoxic drugs, Which adapted the concept of viable tumor-tumoral tissue showing uptake in arterial phase of contrast-enhanced MSCT abdomen.

Elastography can provide information about tumor stiffness to predict tumor response after TACE and detect any residual or recurrence.

We also use color Doppler in follow up to detect changes in portal pressure and hepatic artries hemodynamics of HCC patients after TACE. Mainly we search for changes in portal vein velocity {PVVel}, hepatic artery resistive index {HARI} and hepatic artery pulsitality index {HAPI}.