Percutaneous ablation for bone and soft tissue metastases—why cryoablation?

Excerpt

Image-guided percutaneous thermal ablation has been developed into an effective method to help treat patients with bone and soft tissue tumors, including both benign and metastatic disease. Indeed, during the past few decades, many new ablation technologies have been developed and applied to this clinical problem, including cryoablation, radiofrequency ablation (RFA), microwave ablation, laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT), and focused ultrasound therapy. While these are all minimally invasive methods to destroy abnormal tissue, the technologies vary in the type of energy delivered, image guidance methods, treatment monitoring, and patient experience with each procedure. These differences become important in the ability to derive palliation of pain, achieve complete local control of the tumor when necessary, and avoid complications. …