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©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Local ablation of pancreatic tumors: State of the art and future perspectives
Vincenza Granata, Roberta Grassi, Roberta Fusco, Andrea Belli, Raffaele Palaia, Gianpaolo Carrafiello, Vittorio Miele, Roberto Grassi, Antonella Petrillo, Francesco Izzo
Vincenza Granata, Roberta Fusco, Antonella Petrillo, Department of Radiology, Istituto Nazionale Tumori –IRCCS- Fondazione G. Pascale, Naples 80131, Italy
Roberta Grassi, Department of Radiology, Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Naples 80127, Italy
Andrea Belli, Raffaele Palaia, Francesco Izzo, Department of Surgery, Istituto Nazionale Tumori –IRCCS- Fondazione G. Pascale, Naples 80131, Italy
Gianpaolo Carrafiello, Department of Surgery, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano 20122, Italy
Vittorio Miele, Roberto Grassi, Italian Society of Medical and Interventional Radiology SIRM, SIRM Foundation Milan 20122, Italy
Vittorio Miele, Department of Emergency Radiology, San Camillo Hospital, Firenze 50139, Italy
Roberto Grassi, Department of Radiology, Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Naples 80127, Italy
Author contributions: Each author has participated sufficiently in any submission to take public responsibility for its content: Conceptualization; data curation; formal analysis; investigation; methodology; supervision; validation; visualization; roles/writing-original draft; and writing-review and editing.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflict of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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/ Corresponding author: Roberta Fusco, PhD, Technician, Department of Radiology, Istituto Nazionale Tumori –IRCCS- Fondazione G. Pascale, Via Mariano Semmola, Naples 80131, Italy. r.fusco@istitutotumori.na.it
Received: March 7, 2021
Peer-review started: March 7, 2021
First decision: March 27, 2021
Revised: March 28, 2021
Accepted: May 8, 2021
Article in press: May 8, 2021
Published online: June 21, 2021
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
In the current state of knowledge, the most commonly used technologies in locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC) are radiofrequency ablation (RFA), microwave ablation, and irreversible electroporation (IRE) or reversible electroporation combined with low doses of chemotherapeutic drugs.
Research motivation
In the management of patients with pancreatic cancer, the possibility of a multimodal approach should be considered.
Research objectives
The research purpose was to report an overview and an update on ablation techniques, highlighting the advantages and limitations of each technology.
Research methods
The search covered the years from January 2000 to January 2021 and was performed using data from several electronic databases.
Research results
Ablation therapies seem effective and safe with low post-treatment mortality. Although complications are mostly self-limiting, severe complications do occur.
Research conclusions
Overall survival varies widely between different studies, and the additional value of ablation treatments for LAPC needs to be further explored.
Research perspectives
Further efforts are also needed to address patient selection, as well as the use of IRE for “margin accentuation” during surgical resection, so the combination of RFA with immunotherapy represents a novel angle of attack against this tumour type.
