Advanced Digestive Health Clinic at Sharp Memorial Hospital

Ensuring the best possible hepatobiliary care for patients with liver, pancreas and digestive conditions

Sharp HealthCare provides extraordinary care for patients with chronic liver and digestive diseases, and serves as a resource to physicians across Southern California. Our liver and digestive care experts use the most advanced technology to treat conditions involving the liver, pancreas, gallbladder and bile ducts.

Therapies and treatments

Sharp offers a full range of medical and surgical treatments for patients with liver and digestive conditions. Using the most advanced technology, our specialists use a team approach to ensure the best possible care for each patient.

Interventional radiology tumor ablation

Sharp Memorial Hospital provides interventional radiology (IR) procedures called locoregional therapies, which include angiogram-based and thermal-ablation procedures, and are performed without surgical incisions. IR procedures have been especially helpful in treating hepatomas or hepatocellular cancers (HCC), which start in the liver. There are currently no effective oral or intravenous chemotherapeutic agents to treat HCC. Only about 20% of patients are candidates for surgical resection; and traditional external beam radiation therapy has a limited treatment role.

• Angiogram procedures — Y90 radioembolization and transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) procedures deposit either tiny radioactive particles or chemotherapy-loaded beads directly into the tumors via the blood vessels that supply them. Y90 and TACE are done under sedation.

• Thermal ablation procedures — Specialized probes are passed through the skin and into the tumor. The probes are precisely guided using CT or ultrasound imaging. When activated, the probes destroy the tumor by heating or freezing it. The heating is typically produced with microwave energy, while the freezing is the result of flowing a cryogenic gas (argon) through the probe. Ablations are typically done with general anesthesia. The goal of locoregional therapy depends on the stage of the cancer. Many patients can have their cancer eliminated completely with these therapies, while others are improved enough to make them candidates for a final goal of liver transplantation.

Surgical solutions

Sharp HealthCare offers comprehensive surgical management, including options for general surgery, advanced liver surgery, and hepatic resections of primary and secondary tumors.

Patients with liver or digestive diseases who require surgery are at greater risk for surgical and anesthesia-related complications than those who are healthy. Surgical procedures for patients with advanced disease may be high risk related to the potential for coagulopathies, bleeding and multi-organ failure. Even patients undergoing typically low-risk general surgeries, such as cholecystectomies, should be referred to a surgical specialist for care. The level of the risk depends on the type of disease, its severity, the surgical procedure and the type of anesthesia administered.