COMPARISON BETWEEN PERCUTAENOUS ETHANOL INJECTIONAND RDIOFREQUENCY ABLATION IN TREATMENT OF HEPATOCELLULAR CARCIN0MA

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is rapidly fatal tumour that usually becomes symptomatic only at a stage beyound the reach of currently avai I able treatment.

In patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (I-ICC) with tumour si1.e less than Scm in diameter percutaneous ablation of neoplastic tissue with ethanol injection (PEl) has become widely accepted due to (rel<ltive simplicity, low cost and safety of the technique).

Other percutaneous techniques are developed to improve the results of percutaneous ethanol injection (PEl) such as laser, microwaves and radiofrequency ablation (RFA).

Our study included comparison between the effectiveness of percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and with that of pL:cut;meous ethanol injection (PEl) in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (I-ICC) 3cm in diameter.

The study was clone on thirty patients of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). 15 patients were treated with percutaneous injection (PEl) and the other 15 patients were treated with percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) (with matched age, sex and type of malignacy group).

They were subjected to full history taking, clinical examination, liver fuction, C.T scan, U/S, a fetoprotein) before :md after the treatment by each method.

We found that percutanous racliofrequency ablation (RFA) gave better resu.lts of treatment than percutaneous ethanol injection (PEl), Jess invasive, Jess complic<ltions, with higher rate of complete nectosis and less number of sessions.