Adverse reactions associated with immune checkpoint inhibitor in treatment of liver cancer and related treatment measures

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) exert a therapeutic effect on liver cancer by enhancing the body's anti-tumor immunity and have become an important treatment method in the field of liver cancer. However, while ICIs activate the anti-tumor immunity, they also bring a series of special toxic and side effects, i.e., immune-related adverse events (irAEs). With the wide application of ICIs, irAEs have become a major challenge in clinical practice. Such irAEs have a wide potential disease spectrum and include more than 70 different pathological states, and the most common types of irAEs associated with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors are skin toxicity, endocrine toxicity, pneumonia, and digestive tract toxicity, while rare irAEs include the toxicity of the central nervous system and the cardiovascular, renal, and blood systems. The wide disease spectrum of irAEs requires multidisciplinary collaborative management, and at present, many academic institutions or platforms in China and globally have formulated various guidelines for irAE management. However, the management of irAEs currently lacks the support of the results of high-level prospective trials, and the characteristics of irAEs are different from the original immune diseases of various systems; therefore, its management needs to be further optimized. This article elaborates on the epidemiology of irAEs in immunotherapy for liver cancer, related risk and predictive factors, clinical features of irAEs involving different systems, and precautions for treatment and management.