الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fourth common cause of cancer related death worldwide (Xu et al., 2021). It is a challenging tumor duo to its hypervascularity, spontaneous rupture and direct invasion of the surrounding tissues and vessels (Zhang et al., 2015a). It usually develops on top of liver cirrhosis (Elbaz et al., 2013). Although surgical resection is broadly recognized as curative treatment for HCC, most patients are not surgically candidate because of age, poor hepatic functional reserve or high surgical risk (Poulou et al., 2015). Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is one of the most widely used primary treatments for patients who are not eligible for surgery (Lo et al., 2002). The efficacy of TACE can be affected by many factors such as feeding arteries and tumor size, so complete tumor necrosis may be difficult to be achieved by TACE alone. If tumor necrosis is incomplete, the remaining viable part can cause local recurrence and distant metastasis (Xu et al., 2013). Many studies reported clear benefit to combine TACE with one of the thermal ablative techniques (radiofrequency or microwave) which are generally safe and a good solution for non-surgical patients and early lesions (Lin and Lin, 2003 and Tanaka et al., 2014). Microwave ablation (MWA) is a thermal ablative technique currently in use, destroys tumors by direct hyperthermia ( Andreano and Brace, 2013). |