The impact of general anesthesia on radiofrequency ablation of hepatocellular carcinoma

This study investigates the impact of general anesthesia (GA) on percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). A total of 118 treatment-naïve HCC patients in Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer curative stage were enrolled. Patients who underwent RFA with GA were designated as the GA group, and the others were identified as the non-GA group. All the percutaneous RFA procedures were performed by the same hepatologist. The GA group comprised 42 (44.1%) patients with 71 tumors (mean size, 2.53 cm) and the non-GA group had 66 patients (55.9%) with 90 tumors (mean size, 2.35 cm). Complete tumor ablation was achieved after one session in 92.3% of the 52 GA patients, and after one to three sessions in 92.4% of 66 non-GA patients. The GA group required significantly fewer RFA sessions to obtain a similar treatment effect (p < 0.001) and the duration of hospitalization was also shortened among the GA patients (4.4 ± 0.9 days vs. 5.1 ± 1.9 days, p = 0.044). The 2-year overall survival and recurrence-free survival rates were not significantly different between the two groups. Overall, performing RFA with GA can decrease the number of sessions required to achieve complete tumor ablation in early stage HCC patients and shorten the hospitalization duration.