What is liver cancer?
Liver cancer is a cancer that starts in the liver. To understand liver cancer, it helps to know about how the normal liver looks and works.
The liver is the largest organ inside the body. It lies under your right ribs, just below the right lung. If you were to poke your fingers up under your right ribs, you would almost touch your liver.
The liver is shaped like a pyramid and is divided into right and left lobes. Unlike most other organs, the liver gets blood from 2 sources. The hepatic artery supplies the liver with blood that is rich in oxygen. The portal vein carries nutrient-rich blood from the intestines to the liver.
The liver has many vital functions you cannot live without:
- It breaks down and stores many of the nutrients absorbed from the intestine.
- It makes some of the clotting factors needed to stop bleeding from a cut or injury.
- It secretes bile into the intestine to help absorb nutrients.
- It plays an important part in removing toxic wastes from the body.
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