Abstract
Metastatic liver disease is a major cause of cancer-related morbidity and mortality.
Surgical resection is considered the only curative treatment, yet only a minority
is eligible. Patients who present with unresectable disease are treated with systemic
agents and/or locoregional therapies. The latter include thermal ablation and catheter-based
transarterial interventions. Thermal ablation is reserved for those with limited tumor
burden. It is used to downstage the disease to enable curative surgical resection,
as an adjunct to surgery, or in select patients it is potentially curative. Transarterial
therapies are indicated in those with more diffuse disease. The goals of care are
to palliate symptoms and prolong survival. The indications and supporting data for
thermal ablation and transarterial interventions are reviewed, technical and tumor
factors that need to be considered prior to intervention are outlined, and finally
several cases are presented.
Keywords
interventional radiology - liver metastases - locoregional therapy - thermal ablation
- radioembolization - chemoembolization
