An alternative treatment for hypervascular hepatocellular carcinoma.

HCC is the fifth most common cancer in the world and the third most frequent cause of cancer-related death. Only about 20% of HCC patients are eligible for surgical resection. Therefore, RFA has been used increasingly as a safe technique for treating hepatic tumors. However, for hypervascular HCC, RFA appears less effective because of its blood-flow-induced heat sink effect, which might cause incomplete ablation or recurrence. Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) can reduce the blood supply of HCC by occlusion of tumor arteries. A difficulty remains for those patients who cannot tolerate or are ineligible for TACE because of liver cirrhosis or difficulty in manipulating vessels with abnormal curvature caused by surgical resection and liver transplantation. PAA of HCC may block or reduce the blood flow, thus increasing the ablation volume of coagulation necrosis of subsequent routine RFA. To the best of our knowledge, the application of PAA to the treatment of hypervascular HCC has not been reported in a large number of patients (see also World Journal of Gastroenterology).

A research article to be published on June 7, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team led by Professor Chen from Peking University School of Oncology, Beijing Cancer Hospital & Institute, studied a total of 154 HCC patients with ...