Image-guided ablative therapies for lung cancer

Lung cancer is the commonest cause of death in adults. Although the treatment of choice is surgical resection with lobectomy, many patients are nonsurgical candidates because of medical comorbidities. Patients may also have recurrent disease after resection or radiotherapy and some patients refuse surgical options. Image-guided ablation has been recently introduced as a safe, alternative treatment of localized disease in carefully selected patients. This article discusses the principles, technique, and follow-up of the 3 main ablative therapies currently used in the lung, radiofrequency ablation, microwave ablation, and percutaneous cryotherapy.