Sustained complete response and complications rates after radiofrequency ablation of very early hepatocellular carcinoma in cirrhosis: Is resection still the treatment of choice?

If liver transplantation is not feasible, partial resection is considered the treatment of choice for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in patients with cirrhosis. However, in some centers the first-line treatment for small, single, operable HCC is now radiofrequency ablation (RFA). In the current study, 218 patients with single HCC

Conclusions: Compared with resection, RFA is less invasive and associated with lower complication rate and lower costs. RFA is also just as effective for ensuring local control of stage T1 HCC, and it is associated with similar survival rates (as recently demonstrated by 2 randomized trials). These data indicate that RFA can be considered the treatment of choice for patients with single HCC