Radiofrequency and Microwave Ablation in the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and microwave ablation (MWA) are the most common thermal ablation methods. Studies evaluating the effectiveness of these techniques have been carried out in recent years.
Evaluation of local therapeutic effectiveness of imaging guided percutaneous thermal ablation methods, short-middle term radiologic and clinical outcomes and to compare the effectiveness of treatment between two MWA and RFA methods.
Patients and We retrospectively browsed clinical-radiologic-pathologic-demographic parameters of patients who had undergone RF or MW treatment due to HCC between January 2012 and January 2015. Twelve females (30%) and 28 males (70%) who had at least 6 months follow-up were included. We evaluated the risk factors which we considered to affect the prognosis by means of Log-Rank (Mantel-Cox) analysis. Complications rates, ablative effectiveness, local progression free and disease free survival rates for 6 months and 1 year periods were calculated by Kaplan Meier test for each group separately. The results of two groups were compared by chi-square test.
6-month, 1-year and 2-year survival rates for thermal ablation were 84.6%, 78.7% and 65% for general; 76.3%, 55.2%, 33% for disease free and 78.9%, 76.2%, 37.3% for local progression free respectively. Size and number of lesions were the only parameters that effective for all type of survival rates. In addition, Child-Pugh classification, AFP (alpha-fetoprotein) level and gender were found to affect just; general, disease free and local progression free survival rates respectively. No statistically significant difference was found in complication, ablative effectiveness, 6 month and 1 year general, disease free and progression free survival rates between RF and MW separately.
RF and MW ablation methods have similar complication rates, tumor ablation efficiency and survival rates for treatment in HCC patients.