(1. Center for Molecular Imaging and Translational Medicine, School of Public Health, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102, China) (2. Department of Intervention, Xiang’an Hospital, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102, China)
Transarterial interventional embolization is one of the commonly used methods that are not suitable for surgical resection of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Lipiodol has become the most commonly used embolization agent for interventional therapy of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) due to its specific retention in HCC tissues. Using lipiodol as a carrier and mixing various antitumor drugs to prepare lipiodol drug emulsions for interventional embolization of advanced HCC strategies has been widely studied and applied in clinical practice. However, the application scenarios and curative effects of different lipiodol drug emulsions are quite different, and the current lipiodol emulsion generally has the problem of poor stability, which limits the development and application of lipiodol emulsion in interventional treatment of HCC. The scientific selection of lipiodol emulsion and increasing the stability of lipiodol emulsion will be the key to improve the curative effect of interventional embolization of advanced HCC.This article will review the types of lipiodol combined drugs and the related methods to increase the stability of lipiodol emulsion, so as to provide reference for clinical practice.