TARE vs TACE for Liver Tumors: How Radioembolization and Chemoembolization Differ

The interventional radiologist had drawn the liver on the back of a lab slip: a lopsided oval, one artery snaking in from below, a dark circle for the tumor. Then she wrote two acronyms beside it, TARE and TACE, and asked which one the family had been reading about. They had read about both, at two in the morning, and had come away more confused than when they started.

That confusion is reasonable. The TARE vs TACE question sits at an odd intersection: two procedures that look almost identical from the outside, use the same thin tube through the same artery, and are often described in the same breath, yet work on the tumor in fundamentally different ways. One relies mostly on a drug and a blocked blood supply. The other relies on radiation delivered from inside the tumor.

Knowing that difference will not make the decision for you. Your treating team weighs liver function, tumor size, blood flow and your own priorities. But understanding what each acronym actually does turns a frightening choice into a conversation you can follow.

What is TARE in liver cancer, and how is TACE different?

Both names describe a route before they describe a treatment. “Transarterial” means the procedure travels through an artery, and here the destination is the hepatic artery, the vessel that carries oxygen-rich blood into the liver. An interventional radiologist, a doctor who treats disease using imaging guidance and thin catheters rather than open surgery, threads a tube from the groin or wrist to the branch of that artery feeding the tumor.

Why the artery? Healthy liver tissue draws most of its blood from the portal vein, which brings nutrient-rich blood up from the gut. Liver tumors, especially hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC, the most common cancer that begins in liver cells), do the opposite: they recruit their supply almost entirely from the artery. That mismatch is the entire basis of these procedures. Treat through the artery and you reach the tumor while sparing much of the normal liver around it.

TACE stands for transarterial chemoembolization. It delivers a chemotherapy drug directly into the tumor’s arterial supply and then plugs those vessels with tiny particles, a step called embolization, so the drug stays put and the tumor loses its oxygen.

TARE stands for transarterial radioembolization. Instead of drug plus plug, it delivers microscopic beads loaded with yttrium-90, a radioactive element that emits beta particles, a form of radiation that travels only a few millimeters in tissue. The beads lodge in small vessels inside and around the tumor and irradiate it from within. You will also see the name SIRT, selective internal radiation therapy, and the shorthand Y-90; they mean the same thing.

Neither procedure is chemotherapy in the intravenous sense, and neither is external beam radiation. Both are locoregional treatments, acting on the liver rather than the whole body, and both are used for HCC as well as for cancers that have spread to the liver from elsewhere, such as colorectal or neuroendocrine tumors (NCI).

How does TACE actually work, step by step?

Picture the morning of the procedure. You have fasted, blood tests have checked your liver and kidneys, and a nurse has placed an intravenous line. Most people receive sedation with local numbing rather than general anesthesia, although the team decides based on your health (Johns Hopkins).

The radiologist punctures the femoral artery at the top of the thigh or the radial artery at the wrist and advances a catheter, watching a live X-ray screen. Contrast dye outlines the liver’s arterial tree like a river delta. The goal is to find the branches feeding the tumor and park the catheter as close to them as possible, an approach called superselective, which limits injury to healthy tissue.

Then comes the treatment, and here TACE splits in two. In conventional TACE, a chemotherapy drug, often an anthracycline such as doxorubicin or a platinum agent, is mixed with an oily contrast that clings to tumor tissue, followed by embolic particles that block the vessels. In drug-eluting bead TACE, the drug is loaded onto small beads that both plug the vessel and release the drug slowly over days. Neither version is a recommendation here; that choice belongs to the treating team.

The combination is the point. Blocking the artery starves the tumor of oxygen, and it also traps the drug so the tumor sees a far higher concentration than the rest of the body does. That is why hair loss and other whole-body chemotherapy effects are uncommon after TACE (Mayo Clinic).

The catheter comes out, pressure or a small closure device seals the puncture, and you lie flat for a few hours. Many centers keep people overnight to manage pain and nausea, though some discharge the same day (Johns Hopkins). If later imaging shows living tumor, TACE can be repeated, and often is.

How does TARE (Y-90 radioembolization) work?

TARE usually takes two visits, and the first one treats nothing. That surprises people, so it is worth explaining.

The first visit is a mapping angiogram. The radiologist threads a catheter into the hepatic artery exactly as in TACE, studies the anatomy, and looks for two hazards. One is any small vessel running from the liver’s artery to the stomach, duodenum or gallbladder; radioactive beads that stray down such a branch could cause an ulcer, so those vessels are sometimes closed with tiny coils. The other is shunting, meaning blood that bypasses the liver’s capillaries and heads straight to the lungs. To measure it, a harmless tracer of protein particles roughly the size of the treatment beads is injected and tracked with a nuclear medicine scan. If too much reaches the lungs, the team may adjust the plan or advise against TARE, because lungs tolerate radiation poorly.

With mapping done, a physicist and the radiologist calculate how much radioactivity the target liver volume should receive. That calculation is individualized and outside the scope of this article.

On treatment day, the catheter returns to the same position and the yttrium-90 microspheres, made of glass or resin and far smaller than a grain of sand, are slowly infused. Unlike TACE, the aim is not to block the artery. The beads are too few and too small to shut down flow; they lodge in the tumor’s tiny vessels and radiate outward over a few millimeters, sparing tissue beyond that edge (NCI).

Yttrium-90 loses half its activity in a little under three days, a physical constant rather than a clinical estimate, so the radiation is essentially spent within a couple of weeks. Most people go home the same day. The tumor’s response unfolds slowly, over weeks to months, because radiation damages cells that then fail to divide rather than killing them on the spot.

TARE vs TACE at a glance: the one idea that separates them

Strip away the acronyms and the difference comes down to a single idea: TACE works mainly by blocking blood flow and concentrating a drug, while TARE works mainly by radiation and blocks very little. Almost every practical distinction flows from that.

Feature	TACE (chemoembolization)	TARE (Y-90 radioembolization)
What damages the tumor	Oxygen starvation plus a locally trapped chemotherapy drug	Beta radiation from yttrium-90 microspheres
Effect on arterial flow	Deliberately blocked	Largely preserved
Number of procedures per treatment	One, often repeated over time	Two: mapping angiogram, then treatment
Typical stay	Often overnight (Johns Hopkins)	Often same day (NCI)
Main short-term effect	Post-embolization syndrome: pain, fever, nausea, fatigue	Fatigue, milder nausea
Delayed risk specific to the method	Liver function drop, abscess	Radiation-induced liver disease, gut ulcer, lung inflammation
When response is judged	Weeks	Months
Limited portal vein tumor	Caution: flow reduction can harm downstream liver	Sometimes considered because flow is preserved
Radiation precautions	None	Brief, simple household precautions per team

Read this as a map of tendencies, not a scorecard. Each row describes what usually happens, and your own anatomy and liver function can override any of it. A person with a tumor pressed against the portal vein may find the flow row decisive; a person who lives far from the hospital may care most about the number of visits. The table shows what differs. Your team decides what matters.

Who is usually offered TACE or TARE, and who is usually asked to wait?

Liver cancer is staged not just by the tumor but by the liver it lives in, because most HCC arises in a liver already scarred by cirrhosis. Two people with identical tumors can be offered different treatments if one has a liver that still works well and the other does not (NHS).

Broadly, TACE and TARE are considered when the cancer is confined to the liver, cannot be removed by surgery or destroyed by ablation (heat or cold applied through a needle), and the liver’s function and the person’s general fitness are preserved. In the widely used Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer staging system this is the intermediate stage, and TACE is the treatment most guidelines list first for it. TARE appears as an alternative, particularly where the embolic effect of TACE would be risky or where a single lobe or segment can be targeted (NCI).

Both are also used as a bridge, holding a tumor steady while someone waits on a transplant list, and sometimes to shrink disease enough to bring a person within transplant criteria, a process called downstaging (Mayo Clinic).

Who is asked to wait, or steered elsewhere? People whose liver is already struggling, shown by jaundice, fluid in the abdomen, confusion from liver failure or low clotting proteins, because any arterial treatment removes some functioning tissue. People with cancer outside the liver, for whom whole-body treatment matters more. People with a completely blocked main portal vein, for whom cutting arterial flow could be dangerous. People with a lung shunt too high for TARE. And anyone too unwell to lie flat for the procedure or recover from it.

“Wait” often means treating something else first: draining fluid, clearing infection, improving nutrition, stabilizing another illness, then reassessing. A multidisciplinary tumor board, a meeting of surgeons, oncologists, radiologists and liver specialists, usually makes the call together.

Y90 radioembolization vs chemoembolization: what the evidence actually shows

Here is the honest state of play. Head-to-head randomized trials comparing TARE with TACE in HCC are few and small. Several of them, and several pooled analyses of published studies, have reported that tumors treated with TARE took longer to start growing again, and that people spent less time in hospital with fewer post-procedure symptoms. None has shown that people live longer after TARE than after TACE. Reviews combining the studies generally conclude that overall survival is similar (NCI).

Why would a treatment delay tumor growth without extending life? Partly because these patients often have cirrhosis, and the liver disease competes with the cancer as a cause of death. Partly because most people go on to other treatments, blurring the effect of the first. And partly because the trials were too small to detect modest differences.

Two larger randomized trials tested TARE not against TACE but against an oral targeted drug in more advanced disease, and TARE did not lengthen survival there either, although quality-of-life measures tended to favor it. Those results cooled some early enthusiasm and shaped where TARE now sits in guidelines: an established option, not a replacement.

Much of the remaining literature, including the propensity-matched comparisons that rank high in search results, is retrospective. Propensity matching is a statistical attempt to make two groups look alike, but it cannot correct for the reasons a doctor chose one treatment over the other in the first place. Treat those studies as hypothesis-generating rather than settled.

What does that leave for a patient? In many situations, a genuine choice between two reasonable options, decided by anatomy, liver function and practical factors rather than by a clear winner. When a team says “either would be reasonable,” they are reporting the evidence accurately, not dodging the question.

TACE vs TARE for HCC: does tumor size or portal vein involvement tip the balance?

Two features of the tumor change the conversation more than most.

The first is the portal vein. HCC has a tendency to grow into this vessel, forming a tumor thrombus. When a branch of the portal vein is blocked, the liver tissue downstream depends heavily on its arterial supply. Embolizing that artery with TACE can tip fragile tissue into failure. Because TARE barely reduces flow, many teams consider it when portal vein involvement is limited and liver function is otherwise adequate. Extensive involvement of the main portal vein usually points toward whole-body therapy instead (NCI).

The second is size. Very large tumors are difficult for TACE because the drug and particles disperse across a vast vascular bed, and repeated sessions wear on the surrounding liver. Retrospective comparisons, including those focused on tumors roughly the size of a grapefruit or larger, have often favored TARE for local control. That is plausible: radiation delivered to a whole lobe can be planned as one complete treatment of a defined volume. Plausible is not proven, and these studies carry the selection bias described above.

At the other extreme, a small tumor confined to one liver segment can be treated with a highly concentrated TARE approach sometimes called radiation segmentectomy, which aims to eliminate that whole segment much as a surgeon would. Ablation and surgery remain the standard tools for small tumors, and TARE in this role is generally reserved for people who cannot have them.

Number of tumors, whether disease sits in one lobe or both, how easily the feeding vessels can be reached, and what treatments came before all feed in as well. None of these is a rule. Each is a weight on the scale your team is balancing, and the same tumor can tip it differently in a liver that is well compensated versus one that is barely coping.

TACE side effects vs TARE side effects

Most people who have TACE meet post-embolization syndrome: a cluster of pain under the right ribs, fever, nausea and profound tiredness that begins within hours and usually eases over several days (Johns Hopkins). It is not an infection but the body’s reaction to a patch of tissue dying all at once. Pain control and anti-nausea medicine from the team manage it, and it is the main reason for overnight observation.

TARE causes far less of this, because little tissue dies abruptly. Its signature effect is fatigue, sometimes lasting a few weeks, with milder nausea and occasional low-grade fever (NCI).

The serious risks differ too. After TACE the concerns are a temporary or, rarely, lasting drop in liver function; liver abscess, more likely if the bile ducts have previously been operated on; gallbladder inflammation if particles reach its artery; and kidney strain from contrast dye. After TARE the concerns are radioembolization-induced liver disease, a delayed decline in liver function appearing weeks later, most often when large volumes are treated in a fragile organ; ulcers of the stomach or duodenum if beads stray; radiation inflammation of the lungs if the shunt was underestimated; and gallbladder or bile duct injury.

Both share the ordinary risks of any arterial procedure: bruising or bleeding at the puncture site, damage to the artery, allergic reaction to contrast, and infection. Both can be followed by a rise in liver enzymes on blood tests that settles on its own.

Hair loss, mouth sores and low blood counts, the familiar burdens of intravenous chemotherapy, are uncommon after TACE because so little drug circulates beyond the liver (Mayo Clinic). Being radioactive in a way that endangers others is not a realistic concern after TARE, though brief, simple precautions are usually advised; more on that below.

What the days and weeks after TARE or TACE usually look like

The first hours are similar for both: lying flat while the puncture seals, sips of water, a nurse checking the pulse in your foot or hand. Then the paths diverge.

After TACE, the evening is often the roughest. Pain and nausea peak, fever may appear, and most people are glad of the hospital bed. By the next day many are eating and walking, and discharge commonly follows one night (Johns Hopkins). At home, fatigue and a dull ache can linger for a week or so, appetite returns gradually, and blood tests check that liver function is recovering. Follow-up imaging, usually contrast CT or MRI, is typically scheduled several weeks out to see how much of the tumor no longer takes up blood, the imaging sign that it has died. Further sessions, if needed, are planned from that scan.

After TARE, most people are home the same day with little pain. The dominant feeling over the following weeks is tiredness that comes in waves, sometimes with a flat appetite (NCI). Teams usually hand over a short list of common-sense radiation precautions for the first days: sitting to urinate, careful handwashing, avoiding prolonged close contact with pregnant people and small children. The exact advice depends on the radioactivity given and local protocol, so follow your own team’s sheet rather than any general article.

The waiting is longer with TARE. Radiation keeps working after the beads have gone quiet, so early scans can look unchanged or even worse before they look better. Many teams do not judge response until a few months have passed, and imaging can show inflammation around the treated zone that is not tumor. Knowing this in advance spares a great deal of anxiety.

Neither procedure requires isolation from work or family beyond what fatigue dictates, and neither interrupts most other medicines, though the team should review everything you take.

Can TACE get rid of liver cancer completely?

People ask this with hope in their voice, and it deserves a straight answer. TACE is usually classed as a treatment to control liver cancer rather than to remove it entirely. On imaging, a tumor sometimes disappears completely after TACE, and that is a genuinely good result. But small nests of cells often survive at the edge, where flow from neighboring vessels keeps them alive, and new tumors tend to arise elsewhere in a cirrhotic liver. Repeat sessions are common for exactly this reason (NHS).

The treatments medicine regards as aimed at complete removal are surgical resection, liver transplantation and, for small tumors, ablation. Transplantation is unique because it replaces the diseased liver along with the tumor, addressing the soil as well as the weed (Mayo Clinic). TACE and TARE most often play supporting roles around those options: holding a tumor steady while a person waits for a donor organ, shrinking disease toward transplant criteria, or offering meaningful control when surgery and ablation are not possible.

A better question to ask is: what is the goal of this TACE for me? The answer might be “to buy time safely on the transplant list,” “to shrink the tumor and reassess,” or “to slow the disease while preserving quality of life.” Each is legitimate, and knowing which one you are pursuing makes the scan that follows far easier to interpret.

Then there is the search-engine question, “what is the survival rate for TACE?” Any single figure would mislead without knowing tumor stage, liver function and what treatments came before and after. Population statistics exist on the NCI website, but they describe groups, not you. Your team can tell you which group your situation most resembles and how much uncertainty surrounds that estimate.

What is the most successful treatment for liver cancer?

There isn’t one, and any article that names one is selling something. The right treatment depends on where the cancer sits on a map with three axes: how much tumor there is and where, how well the liver works, and how fit the person is (NHS).

For a single small tumor in a liver that functions well, surgical removal or ablation is the standard aim. For people with limited tumor burden and cirrhosis, transplantation may be considered, subject to strict criteria and organ availability. For intermediate disease confined to the liver but too extensive for those options, TACE is the guideline standard and TARE a recognized alternative (NCI). For cancer that has grown into major vessels or spread beyond the liver, whole-body therapy leads: immunotherapy drugs, which release the brakes on the immune system, and targeted kinase inhibitors, which block signals tumors use to grow blood vessels. External beam radiation, including highly focused stereotactic techniques, has a growing role for selected tumors.

These options are not rungs on a ladder from weak to strong. They are tools matched to situations, and most people with liver cancer will use more than one over the course of their illness. Someone might have TACE as a bridge, then a transplant. Someone else might have TARE, then immunotherapy when disease appears elsewhere.

The most consequential decision is often not which procedure but whether the case is reviewed by a multidisciplinary team that includes liver surgeons, transplant specialists, medical and radiation oncologists, hepatologists and interventional radiologists. Guidelines across countries recommend that structure because it consistently surfaces options an individual specialist might not think to raise (NHS).

What people often get wrong about TARE vs TACE

Newer means better. TARE is the later arrival, and it is natural to assume progress. The trials say otherwise: similar survival, different trade-offs. Newer means different, and different is sometimes exactly what a particular liver needs.

TACE is “chemo.” It uses a chemotherapy drug, but the delivery is so local that whole-body effects are the exception. People sometimes refuse TACE expecting the hair loss and nausea a relative endured with intravenous treatment; that fear rarely matches the reality (Mayo Clinic).

TARE makes you dangerous to be near. Beta radiation from yttrium-90 travels millimeters in tissue and almost none leaves the body. The precautions teams give are brief and cautious rather than a signal of hazard; they exist to minimize any exposure at all, not because families are at known risk.

One session and it’s done. TACE in particular is designed to be repeated, and follow-up imaging drives the plan. TARE is more often a single treatment per targeted region, but disease elsewhere in the liver may still need attention later.

Having one rules out the other. It does not. People have TACE after TARE and TARE after TACE, subject to liver function and anatomy. What one treatment does constrain is how much healthy liver remains for the next, which is why teams ration these procedures carefully.

The scan a week after TARE tells the story. It rarely does. Radiation effects mature over months, and an early scan can mislead in both directions. Similar haste after TACE is less of a problem but still worth resisting.

Embolization starves the whole liver. Superselective technique targets branches feeding the tumor. Normal liver keeps its portal vein supply, which is the reason these procedures are possible at all.

Questions to ask your care team

Bring a notebook, or a second pair of ears. These questions tend to surface the reasoning behind a recommendation rather than just the recommendation itself.

• Is the goal of this treatment to remove the tumor, to control it, to bridge me to transplant or to shrink it toward another option?
• Why are you suggesting TACE rather than TARE, or TARE rather than TACE, in my case? What about my anatomy or liver function drove that?
• Was my case discussed at a multidisciplinary tumor board, and were surgery, ablation, transplant and whole-body therapy considered?
• How well is my liver working now, and how much function might this procedure cost me?
• Is there any tumor in my portal vein, and how does that affect the choice?
• If TARE is proposed, what did the mapping show about lung shunting and stray vessels?
• How many sessions might I need, and how will you decide whether to repeat or switch?
• What will the first week feel like, and what will I have at home for pain and nausea?
• When is the first follow-up scan, what will you look for, and how confident will you be in what it shows?
• Which of my current medicines, including blood thinners and diabetes treatments, need adjusting around the procedure? (Change nothing without the prescribing clinician’s instruction.)
• What symptoms should make me call, and whom exactly do I call, day or night?
• If this treatment does not work as hoped, what would come next?

None of these is a test for your doctors. Good teams welcome them, because a patient who understands the goal is far better placed to notice when something is off and to weigh the trade-offs that only they can weigh. Write the answers down; the details blur quickly once you are home.

When to call your doctor

Most discomfort after TACE or TARE is expected and passes. Some symptoms are not, and the line between them is worth knowing before you leave the hospital.

Call your treating team the same day, or go to an emergency department, if you notice any of the following:

• Fever that is high, persists beyond the first few days, or returns after settling, which can signal a liver abscess or other infection.
• Severe or worsening abdominal pain that the medicine your team provided does not touch, or pain that shifts to a new area.
• Yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine or pale stools, all signs that liver function or bile drainage is failing.
• New or rapidly increasing swelling of the abdomen or legs.
• Confusion, unusual drowsiness or personality change, which can indicate the liver is not clearing toxins.
• Vomiting blood, black or tarry stools, or vomiting that keeps you from holding down fluids, particularly after TARE, when a stomach or duodenal ulcer is possible.
• Bleeding, an expanding bruise, coldness, numbness or color change in the leg or hand below the puncture site.
• Shortness of breath or a new cough, which after TARE may reflect radiation effect on the lungs and after either procedure may reflect a clot.
• Passing very little urine, a possible sign of kidney strain from contrast.

Two general rules help. The team that did the procedure wants to hear from you, and calling about a symptom that turns out to be nothing is never a mistake. If you feel that something is seriously wrong and cannot reach them, do not wait for a callback; emergency services can treat you and contact your team afterward.

Keep a written summary of what was done, including whether radioactive material was used, so any clinician who sees you unexpectedly has the context they need.

Frequently asked questions

What is TARE in liver cancer?

TARE, transarterial radioembolization, is a procedure in which microscopic glass or resin beads containing the radioactive element yttrium-90 are infused through a catheter into the artery feeding a liver tumor. The beads lodge in the tumor’s small vessels and deliver beta radiation over a range of a few millimeters, damaging cancer cells from inside while sparing most surrounding liver. It is also called SIRT or Y-90 and is used for hepatocellular carcinoma and some cancers that have spread to the liver.

Can TACE get rid of liver cancer completely?

TACE is usually regarded as a treatment to control liver cancer rather than to remove it entirely. A tumor can disappear on imaging after TACE, but cells at the edges often survive and new tumors commonly develop elsewhere in a cirrhotic liver, so repeat sessions are frequent. Treatments aimed at complete removal are surgery, transplantation and ablation; TACE often supports those goals by bridging or downstaging while the team plans next steps.

What is the survival rate for TACE liver cancer?

No single survival figure for TACE is meaningful, because outcomes depend heavily on tumor stage, how well the liver functions, and which treatments come before and after. Published statistics describe groups defined by those factors, not individuals, and randomized comparisons suggest survival after TACE and TARE is broadly similar. Your treating team can explain which published group your situation most resembles and how much uncertainty surrounds that estimate.

What is the most successful treatment for liver cancer?

There is no single most successful treatment; the right option depends on tumor extent, liver function and general fitness. Surgery or ablation is the standard aim for small tumors in a well-functioning liver, transplantation for selected people with cirrhosis, TACE or TARE for intermediate disease confined to the liver, and immunotherapy or targeted drugs for advanced disease. Guidelines recommend that a multidisciplinary team review every case to match the tool to the situation.

Is Y90 radioembolization better than chemoembolization?

Neither is clearly better. Small randomized trials and pooled analyses suggest TARE may delay tumor regrowth and causes fewer immediate side effects and shorter hospital stays, but no trial has shown longer survival than TACE. Guidelines list TACE as the standard for intermediate-stage liver cancer and TARE as an alternative, often chosen when preserving arterial flow matters, such as with limited portal vein involvement. The choice rests on anatomy, liver function and practical factors.

What are the most common TACE side effects?

The most common effect is post-embolization syndrome: right-sided abdominal pain, fever, nausea and fatigue beginning within hours and usually easing over several days. Less common but more serious risks include a drop in liver function, liver abscess, gallbladder inflammation, kidney strain from contrast dye, and bleeding or bruising at the puncture site. Whole-body chemotherapy effects such as hair loss are uncommon because very little drug reaches the rest of the body.

Am I radioactive after Y-90 radioembolization, and is my family safe?

The beads emit beta radiation that travels only millimeters in tissue, so almost none leaves your body and family members are not at meaningful risk. Teams still usually advise brief, simple precautions for the first days, such as careful handwashing, sitting to urinate and limiting prolonged close contact with pregnant people and small children, to keep any exposure as low as possible. Follow the specific instructions your own team provides.

How long does it take to recover from TACE or TARE?

After TACE, most people stay one night, feel worst that first evening, and then improve over a week or so as pain and fatigue fade, with imaging several weeks later. After TARE, most go home the same day with little pain, but tiredness can come and go for a few weeks, and the tumor’s response is usually not judged until a few months have passed because radiation acts slowly. Individual recovery varies with liver function.

Can I have TACE after TARE, or TARE after TACE?

Yes, in many cases. People receive TACE after TARE and TARE after TACE depending on where the disease sits, how the liver is functioning and what the vessels look like on angiography. Each treatment uses up some healthy liver reserve, so teams weigh how much function remains before adding another procedure. Systemic therapy, ablation or transplantation may also be considered in sequence, and the tumor board decides the order.

Why does TARE need two procedures?

The first procedure is a mapping angiogram rather than treatment. It defines the arteries feeding the tumor, closes off any small vessels leading to the stomach or gut so radioactive beads cannot stray there, and measures how much blood shunts from the liver to the lungs using a harmless tracer. That information determines whether TARE is safe and how the radioactivity should be planned. The beads are delivered on a separate day once the plan is set.

References

• Liver cancer – Treatment, NHS
• Liver Cancer, MedlinePlus

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.