The prevalence of major and minor complications caused by the RFA procedure was 2.8% and 1.9% in the elderly group and 3.7% and 2.0% in the non-elderly group, respectively. There was no statistical difference in the prevalence of major and minor complications between the two groups. No patient died from complications in either group. Distinctive complications

in elderly patients did not occur. THE PRESENT STUDY showed that survival rates, curative effects, prognosis-related factors and complications of RFA treatment in patients over 75 years old with HCC were similar to those in patients under 75 years old. There have been many previous studies reporting the efficiency and safety of surgical treatment for HCC in elderly patients21–24 GDC 0199 and most reports have shown similar survival rates and

levels of safety when compared with non-elderly patients. However, there have been few reports investigating these points for RFA treatment of Selleck RG 7204 elderly patients. Tateishi et al. showed that there was no difference in a 3-year survival rate between patients aged over 68 years (76%) and under 68 years (79.2%) in 1000 patients treated with RFA.25 Their data was similar to our results in this study, but their definition of “elderly” was different to ours and detailed analyses were not performed. Our paper is the report, not only presenting survival rates, but also to precisely analyze the curativeness, survival-related factors, causes of death and complications of RFA in more elderly patients. Regarding survival, the cumulative survival curve in the elderly group was identical with that in the non-elderly group, and aging was not associated with survival rates in multivariate

analysis. But based on natural O-methylated flavonoid lifespan, long-term survival rates were expected to be lower in elderly patients than in non-elderly patients. It could be conceivable that this result was influenced by differences in baseline characteristics, including sex, alcohol habits, serum ALT levels and GGT levels, because these factors are associated with progression of hepatic fibrosis or carcinogenesis.26–30 As the background characteristics of both groups were different, as discussed above, we analyzed prognostic factors in each group. It was expected that the presence of comorbid diseases might be a poor prognostic factor in the elderly group, but this was not statistically associated with survival rates in either the elderly or the non-elderly groups. These results suggest that RFA treatment should be addressed proactively even if the elderly HCC patient has a comorbid disease.