Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common cancer worldwide. Despite the widespread application of surveillance programs in high-risk populations, patients continue to present with huge (≥ 10 cm) HCCs.And it's still a challenge to treat huge HCC nowadays.Surgical resection is currently the only curative treatment for huge HCCs ; however, only a minority of patients are candidates for curative resection. Sorafenib is recommended for the treatment of advanced HCCs, including huge HCCs, but the usage is severely limited by high adverse event rates and low efficiency. Thus, transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is considered the first choice for huge unresectable HCCs. Several studies have concluded that TACE effectively improves the overall survival of patients with huge HCCs. Meanwhile, microwave ablation (MWA) now has been shown to be safe and effective for local tumor control in HCC patients. However, neither MWA nor TACE alone can achieve complete control of large HCCs . Therefore, the combination of TACE and MWA (TACE+MWA) is an appealing approach to treat HCCs. TACE+MWA now has been shown to improve overall survival rates compared with TACE alone in patients with small to large HCCs. But little data is available on TACE+MWA in patients with huge unresectable HCCs. Thus, the study was designed.
The purpose of this study was to prospectively evaluate the efficacy and safety of TACE combined with MWA in patients with huge unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma.