Local treatment of oligometastatic disease: current role

Abstract

The presence of distant metastases has long been a predictor of poor outcome in solid cancer. However, in an oncologic situation called oligometastatic disease (OMD), multiple studies have revealed a survival benefit with aggressive treatment of these metastases. Besides surgery and radiation therapy, local thermal therapies have developed into a treatment option for OMD. Most studies concerning local therapy of OMD are available for colorectal cancer, which is therefore the focus of this article. Furthermore, this review gives a basic overview of the most popular ablation techniques for treatment of OMD.

Figure 1.

a-d: MRI: 63-year old male patient with two hepatic metastases of a colorectal carcinoma in the liver segment IVa and VIII. The patient initially underwent left-sided hemihepatectomy for the metastasis in segment IVa with a remaining metastasis in segment VIII (arrow in Figure 1a and b). Thereafter, this remaining metastasis was treated with microwave ablation (Figure 1c). Contrast enhanced control imaging shows the ablation zone surrounding the target tumour (Figure 1d).