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Cochrane Evaluates Liver Cancer Treatment Approaches

Cochrane; 2017 Mar 28; Majumdar, Roccarina, et al

Publish date:: April 18, 2017

There was no difference in all-cause mortality between surgery and radiofrequency ablation in people with very early- or early-stage primary liver cancer who were eligible for surgery, according to a Cochrane review of 18 trials involving more than 3,100 individuals.

The studies compared 1) surgery with radiofrequency ablation, or 2) different non-surgical interventions. Among the findings:

All-cause mortality was higher with percutaneous acetic acid injection and percutaneous alcohol injection than with radiofrequency ablation.
There was no evidence of a difference in all-cause mortality for the other comparisons.

The authors called for high-quality studies to assess all-cause mortality and health-related quality of life, with follow-up periods of at least 5 years.

Citation:

Majumdar A, Roccarina D, Thorburn D, Davidson B, Tsochatzis E, Gurusamy K. Treatment of very early- or early-stage primary liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma). Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2017 Mar 28;3:CD011650. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD011650.pub2.

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