The short-term efficacy of no-touch radiofrequency ablation in treating cirrhosis-based small hepatocellular carcinoma

Yuelong Chai,Kun Li,Chang Zhang,Kuansheng Ma,Shihan Chen

doi:10.1186/s12885-019-5707-0

Yuelong Chai, Kun Li + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-019-5707-0

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Journal: BMC Cancer	Publication Date: May 27, 2019
Citations: 12	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Southwest Hospital, Army Medical University

Abstract

BackgroundRadiofrequency ablation (RFA) for the treatment of small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a drawback of high recurrence rate. No-touch technique was developed to overcome it. However, it has barely been studied in Chinese populations. The aim of this study is to determine the safety and efficacy of no-touch RFA in the treatment of cirrhosis-based small HCC patients.MethodsA total of 130 patients of small HCC in Southwest Hospital were enrolled in this study, 46 cases treated by no-touch RFA and 84 cases by conventional RFA. Treatment complications and tumor-free survival rate and overall survival rate were compared and analyzed.ResultsThere were no significant differences in baseline confounding factors between the two groups. The ablation volume of no-touch RFA technique was significantly higher than conventional RFA (P = 0.002) but the remaining liver volume and treatment complications of the two techniques were the same (P = 0.702 and P = 0.269, respectively). Cox regression model revealed that conventional RFA was a predictive factor for short-term HCC recurrence (P = 0.041 for 2-year recurrence rate). Kaplan-Meier survival showed that tumor-free survival in no-touch group was significantly higher than conventional group (P = 0.047).ConclusionsOur data showed that no-touch RFA provided a higher short-term tumor-free survival rate than conventional RFA but was as safe as conventional RFA.

Highlights

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for the treatment of small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a drawback of high recurrence rate
Baseline patient characteristics Baseline characteristics of all enrolled HCC patients were listed in Table 1, and data were presented as median with interquartile range
Except for tumor size, there were no significant differences in each parameters between NT-RFA and C-RFA group

Summary

Introduction

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for the treatment of small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a drawback of high recurrence rate. No-touch technique was developed to overcome it. It has barely been studied in Chinese populations. The aim of this study is to determine the safety and efficacy of no-touch RFA in the treatment of cirrhosis-based small HCC patients. Percutaneous thermal ablative techniques is a curative method for the treatment of small HCC except for hepatectomy and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is first-line of this technique, as recommended by each liver study associations [5,6,7,8]. Multibipolar RFA was developed to overcome the shortcomings of conventional RFA, providing a larger necrosis margin and volume, and no-touch technique is one of the most frequent methods of multibipolar RFA [9].

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