CT-guided radiofrequency abalation (RFA) has been shown to be 100 percent successful at eradicating small malignant kidney tumors, according to a study out of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

RFA uses a probe, guided by CT. A high-frequency current heats the tumor and destroys it.

More than 100 patients underwent RFA for kidney tumors. Of the 95 tumors that were smaller than 3.7 cm, all were completely eradicated by one treatment, as were 14 of the larger tumors. Seven more of the 16 larger tumors were eradicated after a second treatment, for a total of 93 percent success rate for all 125 tumors.

According to the lead author, Ronald J. Zagoria, "The results – a high cure rate and low complication rate – establish that at institutions with experience doing this procedure, this is an alternative method for treating small renal malignancies in patients who are not good surgical candidates."

For more details on this promising technique see here.

Long-term survival rates for liver cancer have been quite low historically, but a new treatment, radiofrequency ablation therapy, a minimally invasive treatment that uses a tiny needle to fry or freeze tumors, is helping extend the survival of patients with inoperable liver cancer, researchers report.

Currently with the latest chemotherapy treatments, patients with inoperable liver tumors resulting from colorectal cancer have a median survival of 20 months. Our study was designed to see if ablation therapy could improve those survival times," Dr. Perry Shen, assistant professor of surgical oncology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, in Winston-Salem, N.C., said in a prepared statement.

Surgery is used whenever possible, but in cases that are deemed inoperable, it is unable to remove the entire mass.

Patients who received surgery alone had median survival of 39 months, compared to 33 months for those who received ablation therapy -- 13 months longer than the 20-month average for those who received just chemotherapy.