Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 28, 2017; 23(4): 653-660
Published online Jan 28, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i4.653
Laparoscopic resection vs laparoscopic radiofrequency ablation for the treatment of small hepatocellular carcinomas: A single-center analysis
Marco Casaccia, Gregorio Santori, Giuliano Bottino, Pietro Diviacco, Enzo Andorno
Marco Casaccia, Giuliano Bottino, Pietro Diviacco, Enzo Andorno, Department of Surgery, IRCCS, San Martino University Hospital-IST, University of Genoa, 16132 Genoa, Italy
Marco Casaccia, Gregorio Santori, Department of Surgical Sciences and Integrated Diagnostics, School of Medicine, University of Genoa, 16132 Genoa, Italy
Author contributions: Casaccia M designed the research providing intellectual content of critical importance to the work, and drafted the article; Santori G designed the research, performed the analysis, and revised the article; Bottino G collected data and drafted part of the article; Diviacco P drafted part of the article and revised it; Andorno E provided intellectual content of critical importance and made the final revision.
Institutional review board statement: This study didn’t require the approval by the Ethics Committee of the IRCCS - Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria San Martino-IST of Genoa.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: We have no financial relationships to disclose.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Marco Casaccia, Professor, Department of Surgery, IRCCS, San Martino University Hospital-IST, University of Genoa, Monoblocco XI piano, Largo Rosanna Benzi, 10, 16132 Genoa, Italy. marco.casaccia@unige.it
Telephone: +39-010-5554539 Fax: +39-010-5556944
Received: November 16, 2016
Peer-review started: November 18, 2016
First decision: December 19, 2016
Revised: December 30, 2016
Accepted: January 4, 2017
Article in press: January 4, 2017
Published online: January 28, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: This is a retrospective study to evaluate and compare the oncological results of hepatic resection and thermoablation in the treatment of small hepatocellular carcinoma in selected patients, when both approaches are made laparoscopically. Our preliminary results confirm the superiority of laparoscopic liver resection compared to laparoscopic radiofrequency ablation in terms of overall survival. These data need to be confirmed by further studies on a larger number of patients.