Figures & data
Table I. Patient characteristics in transarterial chemoembolization and microwave ablation combined with transcatheter arterial embolization groups.
Figure 1. A 12 cm HCC tumor occupying segment six of the right lobe of the liver in a 53-years-old patient underwent one course of TACE and three sessions of microwave ablation for HCC. Compared with tumor size before ablation, an obvious shrinkage and absences of contrast enhancement within the treated region was observed in the lesion treated with TACE plus microwave ablation. (a, b) before TACE; (c) 3 weeks after TACE and just before microwave ablation; (d, e) 3 weeks after TACE, just before ablation, tumor blood supply was reduced, but contrast enhancement still remained in some areas within the tumor; (f, g) After the microwave ablation session, no evidence of contrast enhancement was observed in the treated HCC, the tumor became completely necrotic.
Figure 2. Graph shows cumulative survival curves, calculated with the Kaplan-Meier method, for patients treated with either TACE alone (green line, group 1, n = 18) or TACE and microwave ablation (blue line, group 2, n = 16). Patients treated with TACE and ablation had substantially higher survival rates than those treated with TACE alone (P = 0.003). The median survival time was 10 months for patients treated in group 2 and 6 months for patients treated in group 1. The 6-month survival rate was 75% in group 2 and 50% in group 1, and the 1-year survival rate was 33.3% and 11.1%, The 18-month survival rate was 18.7% in group 2 and 0% in group 1, and the 2-year survival rate was 6.25% and 0%, respectively. For those patients who died during the follow-up period, mean survival times were 6.13 months ± 0.83 in group 1 and 11.61 months ± 1.59 in group 2.
