Satoru Murata, MD, PhD, Department of Radiology/Center for Advanced Medical Technology, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi, Bunkyou-ku, Tokyo 113-8602, Japan. genji@nms.ac.jp
Research Domain of This Article
Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
Satoru Murata, Takahiko Mine, Fumie Sugihara, Daisuke Yasui, Hidenori Yamaguchi, Tatsuo Ueda, Shiro Onozawa, Shin-ichiro Kumita, Department of Radiology/Center for Advanced Medical Technology, Nippon Medical School, Tokyo 113-8602, Japan
Author contributions: Murata S contributed to conception and design, literature search, manuscript preparation and editing; Mine T, Sugihara F, Yasui D, Yamaguchi H, Ueda T, Onozawa S and Kumita S contributed to literature search, manuscript preparation and editing; all authors have reviewed and approved the manuscript in its final form; Murata S is the guarantor of the article.
Correspondence to: Satoru Murata, MD, PhD, Department of Radiology/Center for Advanced Medical Technology, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi, Bunkyou-ku, Tokyo 113-8602, Japan. genji@nms.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-3-58146240 Fax: +81-3-56851795
Received: March 11, 2014 Revised: April 22, 2014 Accepted: July 24, 2014 Published online: October 7, 2014 Processing time: 209 Days and 21.9 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Interventional treatments for intermediate-stage HCC patients such as transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE), drug-eluting bead embolization, and radioembolization, continue to evolve, improving prognosis. However, advanced-stage HCC is typically treated only with sorafenib, with only a modest improvement in overall survival. More effective therapies such as combined TACE and radiotherapy, TACE with special techniques, and isolated hepatic perfusion have been studied extensively. This review summarizes data on published and important ongoing studies concerning interventional treatments for unresectable HCC and discusses technical improvements in these interventions, particularly for advanced-stage HCC.