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Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common cause of all malignancies and causes approximately one million deaths each year (Cahill; 2005).
Most patients with HCC are not candidates for curative therapies such as resection or liver transplantation due to both tumor extension and underlying liver disease (yuen et al., 2002). Minimally invasive techniques have recently emerged as alternavites for treatment of non respectable liver tumors. These include microwave, laser, radiofrequency ablation, cryoablation, Ethanol injection and chemoembolization (Kessler et al., 2002).
Radiofrequency ablation is a promising new minimally invasive technique for the treatment of small HCC. This technique utilizes high frequency alternating current to heat tissue to the point of coagulation necrosis (Lovet et al., 2001). The major limitation of radiofrequency ablation is the inability to reliably create adequate volumes of complete destruction of large HCC (Goldberg et al., 2000). This limitation results from the difficulties inherent to heating large tumor volumes. In addition, foci of viable tumor can persist even after apparently adequate thermal ablation (Goldberg et al., 2000). Hence strategies to increase the volume of induced tumor destructio