Clinical Approach to Liver Mass Lesions

The clinical approach to liver mass lesions requires attention to the clinical context within which the mass is identified, the symptoms of the patient, and the physical examination, laboratory tests, and imaging studies. With the advent of frequent ultrasonographic or cross-sectional imaging of the abdomen for various abdominal symptoms, many liver mass lesions are now discovered incidentally during imaging performed for unrelated symptoms. It is important to evaluate fully these incidentally discovered lesions because a significant proportion of them represent malignant or premalignant disease that requires appropriate management. This chapter describes the overall approach to the evaluation and diagnosis of liver mass lesions and summarizes the clinical features and management of the most common benign and malignant liver masses (Table 1).