Long-term survival after radiofrequency ablation for pulmonary metastasis from hepatocellular carcinoma: report of two cases.

摘要

The poor long-term outcome for patients with hepatocel-lular carcinoma (HCC) is mainly because of the high incidence of recurrence after hepatic resection. The lung is the most common site for extrahepatic spread (1). Surgical resection may be applied in selected patients with pulmonary metastasis, and several studies have noted its effectiveness (2,3). Percutaneous radiofrequency (RF) ablation is increasingly being used as a local treatment for lung cancer (4-6). In addition, there have been promising data on midterm survival following this treatment: 74% at 3 years (4) and 75% at 2 years (5) for patients with stage I non-small-cell lung cancer; and 66% at 2 years (5) and 48% (6) at 3 years for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. Such favorable survival outcomes have encouraged the expansion of this technique to the treatment of pulmonary metastasis from other types of cancer. However, survival of patients with pulmonary metastasis from HCC after RF ablation has been poorly understood. Herein, we describe two cases of long-term survival after RF ablation of pulmonary metastasis from HCC. Approval from the institutional review board and informed consent from the patients were obtained to perform RF ablation of lung tumors.