RFA Anyone?

Hi Jessica. It is such a confusing thing about this RFA. When my liver mets were discovered
2 1/2 years ago, I searched around the country. Most places would not consider RFA for me because I had bone mets. However, I was able to find a surgeon who disagreed and had the RFA. His name is Stan Rogers and he is at UCSF.

A few things you should consider. Even though you only have one lesion on your scan, lesions smaller than 1 cm usually do not show up. In my case, there were 3 small lesions on scan but when the RFA was done 5 more lesions were found and ablated.

Also how you do the ablation is very important. If the ablation is done by a radiologist, they do it with a needle through the skin, called percutaneous. The problem with this is they don't directly visualize the liver to look for more lesions. If you are going to do an RFA you should have it done laparscopically with someone who has done ALOT of ablations. If it is done this way they will use an ultrasound done directly in the abdomen not through the skin to look for more lesions. I think a percutaneous RFA is not as thorough and will miss small lesions because of this.

Another argument for RFA is why wait. What if the chemo doesn't work and this lesions sheds cells and other lesions grow?

There are times though when one might not be a candidate for an RFA. If the lesion is near a major blood vessel, near the bile ducts or too large ( not your case ) then RFA cannot be done.

I am very glad I had my RFA. It wasn't as easy as I was led to believe. It was a 5 1/2 hour surgery because so many lesions were found and there was more pain than I had been told after surgery. But I would do it again in a minute. My liver has remained clear now for 2 1/2 years.

One thing to remeber as one other person said, your liver will look different on subsequent scans so you have to have a good radiologist who can follow this and figure out the difference between scars and new mets. I have holes left in liver as a result of my RFA but they are stable and now the radiologist knows they are just remnants.

Wish you the best of luck