Combination Therapy for Some Liver Tumors

A new study shows that combining two minimally invasive procedures to treat single liver tumors up to 7 cm is as effective as surgery and lacks the trauma associated with surgery.

The treatment combines embolization, which blocks the blood supply to the tumor by sending particles through a catheter to the arteries supplying the liver, with radiofrequency ablation, which kills the tumor with heat. Survival benefits are equal to those of patients who have surgical resection, and the procedures offer an easier and much quicker recovery than surgery. Furthermore, surgical resection is possible in less than 20% of liver cancer cases, making alternative therapies imperative. Chemotherapy drugs are generally inactive against primary liver cancer.

The study involved 40 patients who had surgical resection and 33 who had embolization plus ablation. The one, two, four, and five-year survival rates for the combined treatment were 97%, 83%, 77%, and 56%, respectively, versus 81%, 70%, 70%, and 57%, respectively, for the surgery group.

"Although surgical resection has historically been considered the gold standard for the treatment of patients with single lesions, the survival data are promising, and we remain cautiously optimistic that these results will hold up in the long term,” said study investigator Anne M. Covey, an interventional radiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY, USA).




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