Radiofrequency ablation as a novel therapy for pulmonary metastasis from colorectal cancer

Radiofrequency (RF) ablation is a thermal therapy that results in coagulation necrosis. Initially, RF ablation was mainly used for treating hepatocellular carcinoma. Favorable outcomes in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma have encouraged the application of this technique to neoplasms in other organs, including the lungs. RF ablation for lung cancer may be carried out percutaneously by using computed tomographic (CT) guidance; the techniques used in this therapy are simple and quite similar to those used in CT-guided lung biopsy. Mortality rate has been reported to be 0.4%. There have been promising survival data after RF ablation: 68% at 2 years, 74% at 3 years, and 75% at 2 years for patients with clinical stage I non-small-cell lung cancer; and 66% at 2 years and 46%-48% at 3 years for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. Therefore, RF ablation of lung cancer is currently one of the hot topics in interventional radiology. In this commentary, we describe the outcomes of RF ablation as a novel therapy for pulmonary metastasis from colorectal cancer.