What are you hoping to achieve? That's the first question which needs to be
asked.

How reliable is PET/CT in terms of revealing the tumors?
Is it safe to say (even if not 100% safe), places not shown on PET are
cancer free?

Hello Ryan and welcome to alt.support.cancer.
Sorry I'm late. My computer quit on me a week or so before your post.
Holden was looking into Theraspheres (SirSphires yttrium-90 ) a year ago.
We haven't heard from him since January of this year (I might do a roll call).
I think his were mets from colon to the liver. I just found his last post (in
the archives) and he was mostly on/off a combo of chemo.
He might be found at http://www.acor.org Mailing list, but I'm not sure which
list or you could try the liver cancer list.
Assuming your father has primary liver cancer (not mets, and not fibrolamellar
variant - apparently a slower growing liver cancer), your father has done quite
well.
Seems to me that Therasphere (radiated beads?) inserted in or near the liver
tumour(s) is also a surgery of sorts.
I know from what Dash's husband went through - fibromallar variant and
chemoembolization, it was pretty well a year of recovery from the treatment,
but hopefully if I do a roll call she and Holden will check in and update us
(and correct me if applicable). He was probably younger than your Dad and this
was his first ever surgery (as far as I know)

Are you the other Ryan (in "Progress in Liver Cancer treatment")?  If not,
perhaps one of you would pick and use a signautre line, so we can distinguish
between you two.

We haven't heard back from those who've had the procedure or inquired about (on
either of two cancer newsgroups) which makes me wonder why not...

I've had difficulty in the past finding the risks of such.  Seems so easy the
way some web pages describe it.
This is the best I've found on a quick search.
http://www.uab.edu/pbc/therasphere.htm
Apparently part of the dose can get into the lungs, stomach or intestine.
Other complications and procedures are described there.
Then what we also don't hear, is whether other tumours pop up in other areas of
the liver or how many people actually survive such a procedure or whether it's
mostly effective (success) for a very young, healthy subset of patients.

It's impossible for us to get a "picture" of your Dad. Some are old and frail,
some are younger and frail, some are middle-age but have been through a lot and
their organs cannot tolerate much more (surgery/chemo/radiation therapy of one
kind or another.  Then there's symptoms. I would want to know what symptoms my
loved one has, how they can best be addressed and how this treatment would
improve such, versus what troubles it might cause. I never want to encourage
someone to have a treatment that might kill their loved one in the process of
trying for a cure or making a tumour shrink or disappear.  Hope you understand
where I'm coming from?

Keep in touch and let us know how you and your father are doing and what the
decisions are/will be.
We'll be here for you, as best we can
J