Current solutions for the heat-sink effect of blood vessels with radiofrequency ablation: A review and future work

Abstract

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) as an alternative treatment to the conventional open surgery is the most popular minimally invasive thermal therapy, and it is widely used in clinic today. One of the most important limits for the RFA in clinic is the difficulty to deal with the heat-sink effect of blood vessels, as it causes the difficulty of control the RFA process and consequently the coagulation size of RFA is decreased considerably (empirically, the coagulation size is less than 3 cm with a single RFA electrode). This paper reviews the literature of the current solution for the heat-sink effect due to large blood vessels and suggests future work for finding more effective solutions.