Page 850 - Read Online

Silk et al. Hepatoma Res 2020;6:73 Hepatoma Research
DOI: 10.20517/2394-5079.2020.61

Review Open Access

Cutaneous toxicities of targeted therapies in the
treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Tarik Silk , Jennifer Wu 2
1
1 Internal Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
2 Hematology and Medical Oncology, Perlmutter Cancer Center, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016,
USA.

Correspondence to: Dr. Jennifer Wu, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Perlmutter Cancer Center, New York University School
of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA. E-mail: jennifer.wu@nychhc.org
How to cite this article: Silk T, Wu J. Cutaneous toxicities of targeted therapies in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma.
Hepatoma Res 2020;6:73. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-5079.2020.61
Received: 23 Jun 2020 First Decision: 5 Aug 2020 Revised: 30 Aug 2020 Accepted: 9 Sep 2020 Published: 16 Oct 2020

Academic Editor: Shu-Kui Qin Copy Editor: Cai-Hong Wang Production Editor: Jing Yu

Abstract
Received: First Decision: Revised: Accepted: Published:
Liver cancer accounts for 4.7% of all newly diagnosed cancers and 8.2% of cancer deaths annu-ally.
Science Editor: Copy Editor: Production Editor: Jing Yu Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for the majority of primary liver cancers. There are 2 curative strategies
in HCC: resection and transplant. Unfortunately, 50% of patients who undergo resection will relapse in 2 years
and many patients on transplant lists become ineligible for transplant due to disease progression. The majority of
patients still require systemic therapies. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors have successfully extended the overall survival
in patients with hepa-tocellular carcinoma. However, these treatments have been noted to cause severe side
effects in-cluding liver toxicity, hypertension, gastrointestinal toxicity and cutaneous adverse effects. This article
will focus on the adverse skin reactions seen during the treatment of hepatocellular carci-noma by various tyrosine
kinase inhibitors. The focus will be symptomatology, management, and whether the development of cutaneous
toxicities can be prognostic.

Keywords: Hepatocellular cancer, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, cutaneous toxicity, hand foot reaction syndrome

BACKGROUND
[1]
Liver cancer accounts for 4.7% of all newly diagnosed cancers and 8.2% of cancer deaths annually .
[2]
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for the majority of primary liver cancers . As much as 50%
[3]
of patients with HCC are diagnosed at early stages when curative treatments are possible . There are
© The Author(s) 2020. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
and indicate if changes were made.

www.hrjournal.net