Needle track seeding following percutaneous procedures for hepatocellular carcinoma

Table 1 Summary of studies documenting seeding of HCC following biopsy or percutaneous therapeutic techniques in which the cohort size is specified¹

	Biopsy alone	Biopsy + PEI	RFA	Biopsy + RFA
Series	14	4	5	8
Total patients from series	22 424	766	1525	2218
No. seeding from series	43	11	19	24
Risk of seeding mean	3.17%	1.40%	1.73%	2.50%
Risk of seeding median	2.29%	1.40%	0.61%	0.95%
Range	0%-11%	1.15%-1.85%	0%-5.56%	0%-12.5%

¹Modified from Stigliano et al[32]. PEI: Percutaneous ethanol injection of proven HCC; RFA: Radiofrequency ablation of proven HCC.