Ablative techniques in hepatocellular carcinoma treatment

Hepatocellular carcinoma has been known to arise commonly in the setting of chronic liver disease. Due to its association with cirrhosis, patients with hepatocellular carcinoma often present with markedly diminished hepatic functional reserve, making them poor surgical candidates. For such patients, image-guided percutaneous ablative modalities have provided a viable alternate curative therapy. Although treatment allocation is a decision based on a number of factors, patients eligible for percutaneous ablation generally include those with early stage disease, hepatocellular carcinoma with disease limited to the liver and no extra-hepatic metastases. While percutaneous ethanol injection is the seminal technique, newer developments have led to it being replaced by percutaneous radiofrequency ablation as the most commonly employed procedure, due to a better efficacy as well as safety profile. Other ablative modalities including microwave ablation, laser ablation and cryotherapy are not as widely available. Furthermore, data comparing their effectiveness with well-established procedures like radiofrequency ablation is limited.