Liver-Directed Therapies for Primary and Metastatic Disease: Radiosurgery and Radiofrequency Ablation

摘要

Most patients with hepatobiliary malignancy are ineligible for curative resection due to a relative combination of tumor multiplicity, location, hepatic dysfunction, or comorbidities. Furthermore, curative liver transplantation may not be possible due to appropriate organ donor shortages. Unlike patients with extensive distribution of tumor where transcatheter arterial therapies (i.e., chemoemboliza-tion, radioembolization, etc.) are often the only means to ensure coverage of the afflicted area, patients with either a few small primary or "oligometastatic" tumors are considered eligible for ablative therapies. Such therapies include radiosurgery (i.e., focused radiation therapy) and thermal ablation (i.e., radiofrequency ablation, microwave ablation, etc.).