Radiofrequency ablation leads to excellent local tumor control and durable longterm survival in specific subsets of early stage HCC patients confirming to the Milan criteria.

摘要

In 2011 it will have been 10 years since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved radiofre-quency ablation (RFA) as a treatment for unresectable primary or secondary liver malignancies. Since that time, hundreds of articles have been written about the use of RFA for treating not only liver malignancies, but cancers in the breast, thyroid, kidney, bones, lungs, and prostate. As experience with this tool to treat malignant liver tumors is gained around the world, the approaches, indications, and limitations of this thermal tumor destruction technique have become evident. It is clear from numerous reports that treating tumors in the liver more than 4 to 5 cm in diameter is associated with an increased incidence of incomplete treatment of the tumor. This is usually, in my opinion, reported erroneously as a local recurrence.