Interventional radiology: Role in the treatment of sarcomas

Recent technical innovation in image guidance allows to deliver local treatment through needles inserted percutaneously, and image-guided thermal ablation of small tumour is now part of the treatment armamentarium in selected oligometastatic diseases, allowing for local destruction of small tumour. Radiofrequency ablation allows to control small size STS lung metastases in roughly 90% of attempts, thus providing an efficient and low-invasive local control with preservation of organ function. Small size bone deposit can be targeted with the same rate of efficacy when tumours are small. Ablation can be used in the liver when some tumour foci become resistant to systemic therapy, namely in gastrointestinal stromal tumour patients. In addition, interventional radiology can now provide efficient and rapid pain palliation as well as bone reconstruction with the use of cementoplasty and percutaneous osteosynthesis, alongside radiation therapy which has been a long time player for pain palliation in bone metastases.