Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. May 24, 2025; 16(5): 105881
Published online May 24, 2025. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v16.i5.105881
Navigating the evidence for hepatocellular carcinoma treatment: Surgery vs radiofrequency ablation through sentiment and meta-analysis
Ottavia Cicerone, Stefania Mantovani, Barbara Oliviero, Giorgia Basilico, Salvatore Corallo, Pietro Quaretti, Marcello Maestri
Ottavia Cicerone, Giorgia Basilico, Department of Clinical-Surgical, Diagnostic and Pediatric Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia 27100, Italy
Stefania Mantovani, Barbara Oliviero, Department of Infectious Diseases-Clinical Immunology, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia 27100, Italy
Salvatore Corallo, Department of Oncology, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia 27100, Italy
Pietro Quaretti, Department of Diagnostic Imaging-Interventional Radiology, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia 27100, Italy
Marcello Maestri, Department of General Surgery I-Liver Service, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia 27100, Italy
Author contributions: Cicerone O contributed to the concept and design of the study, the sentiment and meta-analysis and the writing of the original draft; Maestri M contributed to the concept and design, the sentiment and meta-analysis, the project administration and the supervision of the study; Mantovani S, Oliviero B, Basilico G, and Corallo S contributed to data curation; Quaretti P and Maestri M contributed to the supervision of the study; Mantovani S and Maestri M contributed to the review and editing of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Marcello Maestri, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of General Surgery I-Liver Service, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, P.le Golgi 19, Pavia 27100, Italy. m.maestri@smatteo.pv.it
Received: February 10, 2025
Revised: March 13, 2025
Accepted: April 8, 2025
Published online: May 24, 2025
Processing time: 100 Days and 5.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: With the exponential growth of medical literature, critically evaluating content is becoming increasingly complex. Reading abstracts is often the first step in selecting articles, influencing the decision-making process of clinicians and researchers. However, this study demonstrates how such an approach can lead to misleading interpretations of actual clinical outcomes, highlighting the need for a more in-depth analysis to avoid erroneous or distorted conclusions.