Image-Guided Percutaneous Ablation of Renal Tumors

Renal tumors account for more than 50,000 new cases annually in the United States with a rising incidence (Chow et al., 1999). This is mainly because of an increase in diagnosis due to widespread use of cross-sectional imaging (Pantuck et al., 2001). Renal cell carcinoma constitutes 4% of all adult malignancies (American Cancer Society, 2008) and about 70 to 80 percent of patients presenting with localized limited-stage disease (Luciani et al., 2000; Janzen et al.,2003). Nephron-sparing surgery remians the gold standard treatment for small renal tumors. Although operative resection has been shown to be effective for treatment of small renal tumors and for preservation of renal function, it does have morbidity and mortality risks (Fergany et al., 2000; Gill et al., 2007; Breda et al., 2009). Early laparoscopic renal cryoablation results have shown technical feasibility and offer a less invasive technique for destroying small renal tumors (Spaliviero et al., 2004). Image-guided percutaneous ablation of small renal tumors is less invasive, incurs less damage to uninvolved noncancerous renal tissue and is becoming a viable alternative to nephronsparing surgery (Hui et al., 2008, Gontero et al., 2010).