Image-guided percutaneous ablation of lung malignancies: A minimally invasive alternative for nonsurgical patients or unresectable tumors.

Lung cancer remains the malignancy with the highest mortality and second highest incidence in both men and women within the United States. Image-guided ablative therapies are safe and effective for localized control of unresectable liver, renal, bone, and lung tumors. Local ablative therapies have been shown to slow disease progression and prolong disease-free survival in patients who are not surgical candidates, either due to local extent of disease or medical comorbidities. Commonly encountered complications of percutaneous ablation of lung tumors include pneumothorax, pleural inflammation, pleural effusions, and pneumonia, which are usually easily managed. This review will discuss the merits of image-guided ablation in the treatment of lung tumors and the underlying mechanism, procedural techniques, clinical utility, toxicity, imaging of tumor response, and future developments, with a focus on radiofrequency ablation.