Percutaneous microwave ablation for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the elderly: a promising outlook.

INTRODUCTION: Microwave ablation (MWA) is a relatively new minimally invasive treatment option for lung cancer with substantially lower morbidity and mortality than surgery. This retrospective study was performed to evaluate the safety, effectiveness and follow-up imaging of MWA in the elderly aged 75 years and above.

METHODS: Eleven percutaneous computed tomography (CT)-guided MWA of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were performed in 10 patients aged 75 years and older. All but one patient were treated with a high-powered MWA system delivering maximally 140 W. Follow-up with CT and fludeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) was carried out over a maximum period of 30 months and a median period of 12 months.

RESULTS: There were no peri-procedural deaths or major complications. Seven patients were disease free at the time of manuscript submission. Three patients showed growth of the treated lesions, one patient aged 90 years deceased due to unknown cause after approximately 18 months. One patient presented with local progression and disseminated metastatic disease at 12 months; he is still alive. One patient showed increasing soft tissue at the ablation site 15 months post-treatment. Three consecutive core biopsies over 2 months failed to confirm tumour recurrence.

CONCLUSIONS: MWA therapy is a promising option of treating early-stage NSCLC in the elderly with good treatment outcome and negligible morbidity. Determining successful treatment outcome may be challenging at times as local tissue increase and PET-CT positivity do not seem to necessarily correlate with reccurrence of malignancy.