Introduction:

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most frequent malignant primary liver tumor. Only 15% of patients will undergo surgical resection or transplantation, thus local ablation is an important treatment with many advantages.

Objective:

To evaluate the effectiveness of radiofrequency ablation in our population.

Material and methods:

Retrospective study of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma undergoing radiofrequency ablation, analyzing sociodemographic variables, tumor relate, stage (Child-Pugh, OKUDA, BCLC, CLIP, MELD and ALBI), use of sorafenib and survival.

Results:

Sixteen patients (average age 71.25 years) with concomitant pathology in 87.5%, were analyzed. 62.5% of the patients suffered cirrhosis, 56.3% Child-Pugh A and 6.3% B. 62.5% of patients were OKUDA I. 37.5% with BCLC A, 56.3% BCLC B and 6.3% BCLC C. 56.3% were CLIP 0. Average MELD 8.44 ± 2.15 and average ALBI -2.54 ± 0.42. Tumor size was 5.81 ± 2.81 cm and use of sorafenib in 25%. Average survival was 37.76 months, survival rate 58.5% at one year and 23.4% at five. Low body mass index was associated with low survival (p = 0.031).

Conclusion:

Our study indicates that radiofrequency ablation is used in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma in various stages and sometimes in tumors > 5 cm, making survival shorter than other studies.