When should you worry about jaundice if you have liver cancer?

Liver cancer can affect liver cells or press on the bile ducts, reducing bile drainage and allowing bilirubin to build up. Yellow eyes or skin, dark urine, pale stools and itching may follow. Abdominal swelling, discomfort, reduced appetite or increasing tiredness can also occur, although symptoms vary.

Jaundice may also result from a blocked bile duct, infection, medicine effect or another liver problem. Your oncology or liver team can examine you and decide whether blood tests or imaging are needed.

Call your cancer care team promptly about any new jaundice, worsening itch, darker urine, pale stools, swelling or pain. Keep taking cancer medicines as prescribed unless the team advises otherwise, and check before using supplements or over-the-counter pain medicines. Record when the change began and whether it followed a treatment dose.

Seek emergency care for confusion, unusual sleepiness, fainting, severe or rapidly increasing abdominal pain, repeated vomiting, fever with chills, significant bleeding, severe breathlessness or inability to keep fluids down. Contact the care team urgently if jaundice worsens quickly or you become much weaker, because a blockage, infection or impaired liver function may need immediate treatment.

Ask whether the bile ducts may be blocked, whether a treatment side effect is possible, which tests are planned, and how symptoms can be relieved. Ask whom to call outside clinic hours and which changes require emergency care.