Loco-regional interventional treatments continue to evolve and to play a major role in the therapeutic management of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Image-guided ablation is established as the treatment of choice for patients with early-stage HCC when transplantation or resection is precluded. Recent refinements in technique have substantially increased the ability of radiofrequency ablation to achieve sustained complete response of target tumors in properly selected patients, and new alternate thermal and nonthermal methods for local tumor treatment are currently under investigation. Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is the
standard of care for patients with multinodular disease at the intermediate stage. The introduction of drug-eluting beads--that enhance drug delivery to the tumor and reduce systemic exposure--appears to improve anticancer activity and safety profile of TACE compared with conventional regimens. Despite these advances, the long-term outcomes of patients treated with ...