Until recently, non-invasive therapy such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or both may be considered for cure or expectant palliative treatment and even in cases of regional disease, a combination therapeutic strategy prevails as the standard treatment. Although these modalities produce a modest improvement in survival, some patients suffer from substantial toxicity, especially in patients who already have other co-morbidities.[1-2] Previous studies have shown that radiofrequency ablation (RFA) as an alternative management for lung malignancies has advantages over traditional radiation therapy and systemic chemotherapy.Very recently, some...

Study populations From May 2000 to March 2007, sixty-five patients with primary lung malignancies were treated with RFA (n=56) or PTC (n=9) with CT-guidance at Chonbuk National University Hospital. Indications for these ablative therapies were pulmonary malignant tumors in patients with medical comorbidities, pulmonary compromise, or refusal of surgery. This study was performed with the approval of the institutional ethics committee, and written informed consent had been obtained from every patient before the initiation of treatment. Procedures One radiologist performed all procedures on inpatients who...

Subjects characteristics The characteristics of sixty-five patients with lung malignancies are described in Table 1. We performed sixty-seven sessions of RFA and nine sessions of PTC. The mean follow-up period was 20.5 months (range 2.6-74.3 months; Median 20.8±4.7 months). Complete and partial ablation in pulmonary tumors by PTC or RFA Of all session of procedure, complete ablation was attained in twenty-nine patients (43.3%) treated with RFA and six patients (66.7%) treated with PTC. The rate of complete ablation by RFA was 76.2% for tumors smaller...

In conclusion, RFA or PTC were promising therapeutic methods for pulmonary malignant tumors with satisfactory outcomes of tumor destruction, especially the tumors with less than or equal to 3.0 cm in diameter. Although the data should be collected more for the patients with inoperable lung malignancy after PCT, PCT might be safer than RFA.