Importance: Ablative therapies extend the capability of delivering potentially curative treatment for bilateral hepatic colorectal metastases.
Objective: To compare the long-term effectiveness of ablation with that of resection in patients with bilateral hepatic colorectal metastases.
Design: Review of a prospective database of 2123 operative cases of hepatic colorectal metastases.
Setting: A large institution with expertise in ablation and resection.
Patients: Patients with bilateral colorectal liver metastases undergoing operation with a curative intent. A total of 141 patients had been treated with bilateral resection (BR) and 95 had undergone ablation.
Interventions: Radiofrequency or microwave ablation alone or in combination with resection (A/R) compared with BR.
Main outcomes and measures: We compared tumor characteristics and operative and postoperative outcomes using χ2 or Wilcoxon tests as appropriate and assessed overall survival differences between the 2 groups using the log-rank test.
Results: During the study, 141 patients were treated with BR and 95 patients with A/R. The A/R group was a significantly poorer prognostic group than the BR group as judged by the Clinical Risk Score (P < .01). There was no difference in median operative time (A/R: 280 minutes, BR: 282 minutes; P = .52), but a lower blood loss (A/R: 300 mL, BR: 500 mL; P < .01) and a shorter length of stay (A/R: 7 days, BR: 9 days; P < .01) was achieved in the A/R group. Long-term outcome was not significantly different between the groups (5-year overall survival, A/R: 56%, BR: 49%; P = .16).
Conclusions and relevance: Treatment of bilateral, multiple hepatic metastases with combined resection and ablation was associated with improved perioperative outcomes without compromising long-term survival compared with bilateral resection. Ablative therapies extend the capability of delivering potentially curative treatment for bilateral hepatic colorectal metastases.