I am a 37 yr old man. After a recent abdominal/pelvis MRI with contrast I was told that I had a 5mm benign cyst in the right lobe of my liver. How can they be sure it is benign, simply via MRI Imaging? I had one CT of the Abdomen/Pelvis 2 years prior and another 5 years prior. Neither of these CTs showed this cyst. Why did it suddenly show up now and can I be sure its not metastatic cancer?
Hi, How are you? I am sorry to hear about your diagnosis, but I would not worry about it. Cysts in the liver are a fairly frequent finding on scans of the abdomen. Most often these cysts tend to be \"simple cysts\" and do not cause any trouble whatsoever to the patient. That is one of the reason why they can grow up to 25 CMS without the patient being aware of it. Some other causes for cysts in the liver include certain hereditary diseases (where there will also be cysts in the kidneys) and infections (Amoebas). Rarely malignancies can also appear as a cyst. But in all of these conditions, the patients will usually have symptoms from the disease. The current imaging techniques (CT and MRI scans) are very good at diagnosing the nature of the cyst without the need for biopsying the cyst. In your case, it appears to be a simple cyst (based on what you have written). Although mostly asymptomatic, simple cysts can also produce symptoms when 1) they enlarge to a big size 2) when there is bleeding into the cyst or 3) when they develop an infection in the cyst. In your case, none of these symptoms exist. Since the cyst is small, I would recommend a followup scan at a later date to see if the cyst is enlarging. Hope this helps and hope you start to fell better soon. Please do not hesitate to contact me for further details - rxsuresh@gmail.com