Multibipolar radiofrequency vs single needle microwave ablation for the treatment of newly diagnosed hepatocellular carcinoma

doi:10.3748/wjg.v32.i2.113810

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Jan 14, 2026 (publication date) through Jan 12, 2026

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World Journal of Gastroenterology

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1007-9327

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Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA

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World J Gastroenterol. Jan 14, 2026; 32(2): 113810
Published online Jan 14, 2026. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v32.i2.113810

Multibipolar radiofrequency vs single needle microwave ablation for the treatment of newly diagnosed hepatocellular carcinoma

Cécilia Bahloul, Agnès Rode, Pierre Pradat, Laurent Milot, Jérôme Dumortier, Philippe Merle, Jean-Yves Mabrut, Loïc Boussel, Angelo Della Corte

Cécilia Bahloul, Agnès Rode, Laurent Milot, Loïc Boussel, Angelo Della Corte, Department of Radiology, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon 69002, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

Pierre Pradat, Centre de Recherche Clinique, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon 69002, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

Jérôme Dumortier, Department of Digestive Diseases, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon 69002, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

Philippe Merle, Hepatology Unit, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon 69002, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

Jean-Yves Mabrut, Department of Digestive Surgery and Liver Transplant, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon 69002, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

Author contributions: Bahloul C contributed to the formal analysis, data curation, visualization, and writing - original draft preparation; Bahloul C, Rode A, Pradat P, and Della Corte A contributed to the conceptualization, methodology, investigation, and resources; Rode A, Pradat P, and Della Corte A contributed to the supervision; Bahloul C, Rode A, Pradat P, Milot L, Dumortier J, Merle P, Mabrut JY, Boussel L, and Della Corte A contributed to the validation and writing - review & editing.

Institutional review board statement: Institutional review board approval was obtained by the Comité Scientifique et Éthique des Hospices Civils de Lyon.

Informed consent statement: A non-opposition notice was sent to each patient included in the study.

Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.

Data sharing statement: The database of the patient cohort is available upon contact with the corresponding author.

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: Angelo Della Corte, Department of Radiology, Hospices Civils de Lyon, 103 Gd Rue de la Croix-Rousse, Lyon 69002, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. a.dellacortetartaglione@gmail.com

Received: September 4, 2025
Revised: October 1, 2025
Accepted: November 24, 2025
Published online: January 14, 2026
Processing time: 130 Days and 19.1 Hours

Core Tip

Core Tip: There is limited data comparing multibipolar radiofrequency ablation (mbp-RFA) and microwave ablation (MWA) for treating hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study analyzed 362 patients with newly diagnosed HCC who underwent either mbp-RFA (242 patients, 323 tumors) or MWA (120 patients, 168 tumors). Results showed that mbp-RFA provided better local tumor control, with a lower local tumor progression rate (11.4% vs 25.2%) and a higher complete ablation rate (94.1% vs 87.5%) compared to MWA. The advantage of mbp-RFA was particularly significant for tumors larger than 3 cm, where MWA had a local tumor progression rate of 60.9% vs 21.6% with mbp-RFA. Despite these differences in efficacy, both techniques had similar major complication rates (9.5% vs 7.5%). These findings suggest that mbp-RFA is a more effective option for larger, treatment-naïve HCC tumors while maintaining a comparable safety profile.