Radiofrequency Can Treat Benign Liver Tumors

According to Dr. Du Xi-Lin, from the Tang Du Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University (Xian, China), ultrasound-guided RFA has many merits compared with other methods. "All procedures are under local anesthesia. A laparotomy is not needed so there is minimal injury and pain,” he stated, adding that in most patients, one year after the procedure there was no significant recurrence.

"RFA gives doctors and patients a new choice to cure hepatic cysts. It is an outstanding therapy that induces localized coagulation of the tumor by creating resistive ionic heating through the electrode.” Dr. Du noted that RFA is a relatively new procedure for treatment of hepatic tumors not amenable to removal.

B-ultrasound-guided RFA, using the RF-2000 system of RadioTherapeutics Corp. (Mountain View, CA, USA) and the 450 ultrasound system of Hitachi (Tokyo, Japan), was performed on 29 patients: 12 males and 17 females. The mean age was 47.2. Patients were diagnosed using computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Tumors were single or multiple: eight patients had a single tumor, 21 had multiple tumors.

During the RFA procedure, patients had no significant discomfort. For those with tumors larger than 10 cm or multiple tumors, there was some sweating, local distending, and fever, but no significant changes of liver function. In three cases, serum bilirubin increase occurred but became normal after a week.

For 34 cysts with < 5 cm diameter, the tumors were ablated completely, with no recurrence after three months. For 21 cysts 5-10 cm, the decrease of tumor volume was > 70%. For eight cysts with > 10 cm diameter, the decrease of tumor volume was > 60%. Six cysts had tumor shrinkage up to 80% and fibering. Two cysts had a smaller increase at one month after the RF procedure. In subsequent checks six and 12 months after RFA, tumors less than 10 cm in diameter were fully ablated.



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