Liver cancer is a serious disease that often grows silently until it is found late. Many patients cannot have a full surgery to remove the tumor because their liver is too weak or the cancer is in the wrong place. For these people, a less invasive option called minimally invasive surgical thermal ablation might be the only hope. This new research brings together data from many studies to see if this approach really works for real patients.
The researchers combined information from 3,983 patients who received this treatment. The goal was to check if the procedure was safe and if it actually killed the cancer cells. They looked at two main groups: people with primary liver cancer and those who had cancer spread to their liver from the colon. The team tracked these patients for an average of five years to see how they did.
The results show this method is very safe. Only 0.25% of patients died within 30 days of the procedure, which is a very low risk. Serious complications happened in just 2.2% of cases. The treatment was also very good at destroying the tumor. In the most recent studies after 2017, the failure rate to destroy the tumor dropped to just 1%. For primary liver cancer, 90% of patients were alive one year later, and 45% were alive five years later.
However, there is an important warning to keep in mind. Even though the doctors were very good at destroying the tumor during the surgery, the cancer could come back in the same spot later. The study found that local tumor progression happened at a rate of 6.13 events per 100 person-years. This means that while the surgery works well right away, it does not always guarantee the cancer stays gone for the long term. This is a key difference between the surgery being technically successful and the patient staying cancer-free.
Because the studies used different ways to report results, it is hard to draw perfect conclusions. We need more research with standardized rules to know exactly how well this works for everyone. For now, this procedure is a safe option for tumors that cannot be treated with needles. Patients should talk to their doctors about whether this is right for them, knowing that follow-up care is essential to catch any return of the disease early.