Comparism of radiofrequency ablation and surgical resection in patients with solitary hepatocellular carcinoma within 5 cm

Objective To compare the primary treatment efficacy of radiofrequency ablation and surgical resection in patients with solitary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) which the diameter is ≤5 cm.Methods Databases were searched for comparative studies on radiofrequency ablatiom vs surgical resection published from 2005 to 2012.A Meta-analysis was performed using a randomized or fixed effect model to compare the treatment efficacy between radiofrequency ablatiom and surgical resection.Results Five studies fulfilled the criteria and were included.For HCC patients whose single tumors' diameter is ≤5 cm,radiofrequency ablation was equivalent to surgical resection for 1-,3-and 5-year overall survivals (P ＞ 0.05).However,surgical resection was superior to radiofrequency ablation in 1-,3-and 5-year disease-free survivals and there' s significant difference (P ＜ 0.05).Higher local recurrence rate was associated with radiofrequency ablation than surgical resection.Conclusions For HCC patients whose single tumors' diameter is ≤5 cm,radiofrequency ablation can achieve comparable overall survival as surgical resection,though with higher recurrence rate and lower disease-free survival. Key words: Carcinoma, hepatocellular ;  Catheter ablation ;  Surgical procedures, operative ;  Overall survival ; Disease-free survival