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Updated: Jul 25, 2026
Thermal Ablation for the Treatment of Abdominal Tumors
Published on: March 7, 2011
MR-guided laser thermal ablation of primary and secondary liver tumours
E A Dick1, R Joarder, M de Jode
1Department of Interventional MRI, St Mary's Hospital Campus, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, Praed St, London, UK.
Aim:
To test the hypothesis that magnetic resonance (MR)-guided hepatic tumour ablation is (i) safe and feasible, (ii) is associated with favourable patient survival, and (iii) decreases viable tumour.
Materials And Methods:
One hundred and twenty-five MR-guided laser thermal ablations (LTA) were performed on 35 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC, n=19), hepatic metastases (n=11, mainly colorectal) and carcinoid liver tumours (n=5).
Results:
Mean overall survival was 14.8 months (HCCs 14.6 months, metastases 15.2 months). Near real-time T1-weighted colourized thermal maps correlated moderately with follow-up gadolinium-enhanced MR imaging in predicting ablated tumour area (Pearson correlation coefficient=0.5). There was a significant difference in percentage enhancing pre- and post-LTA (Wilcoxon signed ranks test=0.0001). An average of 50.7% of tumour was ablated by each treatment. In patients with multiple liver tumours ablated tumours grew significantly less than untreated tumours (108%compared with 196% growth, follow-up period 5.8 months, WSRTp=0.07).
Conclusion:
MR- guided LTA of primary and secondary liver tumours is safe, feasible, and significantly decreased amount of enhancing or viable tumour. MR-guided LTA produces a better survival in patients with HCC than would be expected in untreated patients, and has a mean survival in patients with metastases at least equal to the longest median survival in untreated patients.
