RFA is a locoregional therapy for focal neoplastic liver lesions which use is increasing due to its high safety and efficacy.
In our population,
the majority of patients were men with a mean age of 65 years and liver cirrhosis as the most frequent underlying disease (96%),
similar to the demographic characteristics found in other studies [2,3].
The most frequent cause of cirrhosis in our patients was C hepatitis infection,
similar to that described by Zheng et al.
[4] and by [5] Kasuhiro et al.,
In the latter two studies the second cause of cirrhosis was infection by B hepatitis virus (12%); however,
given the epidemiological characteristics of our population,
the second cause in frequency was alcoholism.
Regarding the technique,
in our institution,
the open approach was performed in very few cases (4.8%),
different from other studies such as Nieto et al.
[2],
who studied 34 patients with malignant hepatic tumors not candidates for surgery,
of which 45,2% undergo to open RFA.
The above can be attributed to our high experience performing this procedure under CT guidance.
Of all the focal lesions to which ARF was performed,
46.7% had a complete response,
a lower percentage than that described by Ding et al [3].
(97.1%) and by Nieto et al [2],
(86.1%); however,
with a higher rate of complications than ours (22.7% vs.
7.6%) and with a higher incidence of deaths due to the procedure (8.8% vs.
0%).
These findings suggest that an approach to greater safety is made in our institution,
putting at risk the efficacy of locoregional therapy.
In the study by Ding et al.
[3] only major complications were quantified,
with an incidence of 2.4%; however,
we do not know the rate of total complications.
Taking into account the high incidence of HCC and its mortality,
a detailed study of the available therapeutic techniques is necessary,
especially those minimally invasive,
this being the first study of experience in RFA performed in the Colombian population.