Ablative Techniques for the Management of Osseous Spine Metastases: A Narrative Review

With continued improvements in systemic cancer therapies, there has been an increase in the survivorship of patients with spinal metastases. However, many patients with spinal metastases are frail and may not be able to tolerate the morbidity of open surgery. For these patients, percutaneous ablation techniques offer a minimally invasive approach that can facilitate local tumor control and pain relief. Here we describe the currently employed modalities-radiofrequency ablation (RFA), microwave ablation (MWA), cryoablation, and laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT)-summarize the clinical support for their use, and overview the relative risks and benefits for each. All these technologies offer to help improve local tumor control and improve oncologic pain associated with vertebral metastases, and they have become a staple of multidisciplinary spine metastasis care at many centers. As clinical experience with these technologies continues to grow, their use will likely become more widely adopted, and so understanding of their indications, risks, and benefits will become increasingly important to the practicing spine oncologist.