The Latest on Lung Ablation

Abstract

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women. Despite smoking cessation efforts and advances in lung cancer detection and treatment, long-term survival remains low. For early-stage primary lung carcinoma, surgical resection offers the best chance of long-term survival; however, only about one-third of patients are surgical candidates. For nonsurgical candidates, minimally invasive percutaneous thermal ablation therapies have become recognized as safe and effective treatment alternatives, including radiofrequency ablation, microwave ablation, and cryoablation. Lung ablation is also an acceptable treatment for limited oligometastatic and oligorecurrent diseases. This article discusses the technologies and techniques available for tumor ablation of thoracic malignancies, as well as new treatments on the horizon.

Keywords: cryoablation; interventional radiology; lung cancer; microwave ablation; radiofrequency ablation.

Fig. 1

Metastatic uterine leiomyosarcoma with multiple pulmonary nodules. The patient underwent cryoablation of two-subcentimeter right upper lobe nodule with follow-up imaging demonstrating expected postprocedural change. ( a ) February 2017 chest CT demonstrating two lesions (yellow circle). ( b ) April 2017 cryoablation of right upper lobe pulmonary nodules. ( c ) May 2017 chest CT. ( d ) January 2018 chest CT. ( e ) January 2021 chest CT.