Percutaneous ethanol injection therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma: results in 146 patients.

Sonographically guided percutaneous ethanol injection therapy has been used widely in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. However, few reports have been published on the results of this treatment in large numbers of patients. Accordingly, we describe our experience with 146 patients who had this treatment. The study is an update of our previous reports on this subject.We used ethanol injection, with or without transcatheter arterial embolization, 1048 times in 146 patients who had 242 lesions of hepatocellular carcinoma. In 98 patients, ethanol injection was used to attempt a cure of the disease. In the remaining 48 patients, ethanol injection was used palliatively only to reduce the tumor burden. In most cases, 2-8 ml of absolute ethanol was injected in one treatment session. Patients were given the injections two or three times each week until ethanol was injected throughout the lesion. When tumors were greater than 2 cm in diameter, ethanol was injected into the edges of the lesion.Histopatholog...