Authors' recommendations: Estimates indicate that lung cancer will present in 224,210 new cases and will cause death in 159,260 individuals in 2014 in the United States. In this country, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among men and women, accounting for approximately 29% of all cancer deaths. Additionally, pulmonary metastases may occur in numerous other cancer types. While the preferred treatment for early-stage lung cancer or limited pulmonary metastasis is surgical resection, many patients with these malignancies cannot endure surgical resection due to advanced age, poor cardiopulmonary function, or serious medical comorbidities. Furthermore, over half the patients with lung cancer have advanced inoperable disease at presentation. Recently, several minimally invasive tumor ablation techniques have been used for treating inoperable pulmonary malignancies. These techniques include image-guided percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA), microwave ablation (MWA), laser ablation, cryoablation, and irreversible electroporation, and, for tumors not accessible percutaneously, stereotactic ablative radiation therapy. For treating lung tumors, RFA has been the most widely used of these techniques and has demonstrated efficacy in local tumor control and patient survival. However, RFA in the lung is prone to cooling at the periphery of tumors due to the heat-sink effect caused by nearby blood flow and the high impedance and poor conductivity of heat caused by lung aeration. While producing higher temperatures may overcome these problems, it causes tissue charring. These technical challenges limit the ablation time, the size of the ablation zone, and the success in treating tumors > 3 centimeters (cm) in diameter. MWA may offer advantages over RFA because it deposits energy more quickly and in a broader zone than RFA, and heats tissue directly rather than by thermal conduction as occurs with RFA. These characteristics theoretically minimize the potential for heat sink and impedance, and allow longer ablation time and a larger ablation zone than RFA.

Project Status: Completed

Year Published: 2014

URL for published report: The report may be purchased from: http://www.hayesinc.com/hayes/crd/?crd=17136

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: United States

Organisation Name: HAYES, Inc.

Contact Address: 157 S. Broad Street, Suite 200, Lansdale, PA 19446, USA. Tel: 215 855 0615; Fax: 215 855 5218

Contact Name: saleinfo@hayesinc.com

Contact Email: saleinfo@hayesinc.com

Copyright: 2014 Winifred S. Hayes, Inc