Meng Schneider-Mendez, a senior fellow for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said there are fewer than a dozen instances for every death in the United States.

The number is “troubling to have this many deaths,” she added.

About 25% of the nation’s total cancer deaths occur from the liver, which has the most extensive metastases and is the most common cancer after the brain, according to Cancer Research UK. For each person diagnosed with the most frequent type of metastatic cancer in the United States, there’s a five-fold increase in cancer death risks per year, which means the country could lose 3,000 deaths from liver cancer by 2030, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

In California, about 30 of the 3,500 deaths from metastatic cancer occur in California. Another 40 are in New York, with the remainder scattered throughout the state.

Although the most common type of liver cancer in the United States is found mainly in Western countries, metastatic cancer also occurs in Asia, including in China, South Korea and Japan.

People born to women that have multiple partners at an earlier age are more likely to die of liver cancer, while smokers are at a significantly greater risk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The risk factors and treatment options for liver cancer are different depending on where it’s diagnosed, but there continues to be an urgent need for additional research to understand and address this increasing public health crisis,” Schneider-Mendez said.

Rates have climbed rapidly over the last 30 years, according to federal statistics. In 1991, 1 in 40 people diagnosed with liver cancer were under 60. Today, the rate has reached 1 in 12.

Symptoms can appear in late life, typically later in the life course. They may include fatigue, pain, and nausea. Many people have difficulty getting enough sleep and can struggle with their weight.

“In my 40s, it was not something you could run away from,” said Karen Harkins, a lawyer and cancer survivor who works at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

A 2012 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found the median survival for patients diagnosed with the most common types of liver cancer was 19 years. The median overall survival was 27, which was down from a median of 34 for all cancer diagnosed between 1979 and 1993.

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