Vaccination against hepatitis B is a preventive treatment for primary liver cancer, too little used in France.

The problem in France is that of alcoholic cirrhosis or secondary to weight overload, or iron overload, much more than the monitoring of chronic viral hepatitis.

In these situations of people at risk of liver cancer, preventive monitoring is essential. It involves performing an ultrasound and an alpha fetoprotein assay every six months. An information campaign intended for general practitioners was to be launched this year (2015) to emphasize this simple surveillance, which would make it possible to detect suspicious liver lesions to be treated much earlier.

D Véronique LOUVAIN hepatogastroenterologist.