Thermoablation: a new treatment option to replace surgical intervention?

Local tumor ablation either by high or low temperatures is an ever increasing local therapeutic procedure in the interdisciplinary armamentarium of anticancer therapy. As cryoablation (local cancer tissue destruction by low temperature) is technically demanding, rather expansive and thus has gained low acceptance and low distribution in interventional oncologic radiology, this paper will focus on the state-of-the-art of local tumor cell destruction by high temperatures and electroporation: radiofrequency ablation (RFA), microwave ablation (MWA), and irreversible electroporation (IRE).