Radiofrequency ablation for treating malignant tumors to the lungs

Even if the clinical use of RF ablation in lung tumors started in 2000 [1], the quality of the data available today is limited with inhomogeneous patient populations in early studies mixing primary and metastatic disease. More recently a few prospective studies with larger volume of patient with more homogeneous disease became available. No randomized study versus competitive local treatment such as surgery or stereotaxic body radiation is available. There is only very limited data on other thermal ablation techniques for treating lung lesions such as microwaves, cryoablation [2, 3], and irreversible electroporation [4]. The pathological proof of local efficacy of lung RFA has been obtained in an ablation-resection study where nine of the nine treated metastases show 100% necrosis after percutaneous RFA when treating metastases up to 3 cm [5]. Oversizing the ablation zone has been reported in many study as a key for obtaining local control [6, 7]. The following sections are designed to provide an overview on the available clinical data, based on a selective literature review. Studies including mixed populations with primary lung cancer and metastatic disease are excluded.