Background and objective: Recent years, great progression has been made in treating primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with argon-helium cryosurgical ablation. This study was to evaluate its efficacy on unresectable primary HCC.
Methods: A total of 124 primary HCC patients were divided into early stage, middle stage and advanced stage groups according to BCLC staging classification. Clinical symptoms, tumor size, serum level of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), complications, and survival time were analyzed.
Results: After cryoablation of the tumors, serum level of AFP was reduced in 76 (82.6%) patients, 205 (92.3%) of the 222 tumor lesions were diminished or unchanged. Untill April 2008, 14 patients survived and 110 died. The median survival time was 31.25 months in early stage group, 17.41 months in middle stage group and 6.82 months in advanced stage group.
Conclusion: For the patients with unresectable HCC, argon-helium cryosurgical ablation has the advantages of few complications and certain efficacy.