M.W. Lee's research while affiliated with Samsung Medical Center and other places

... Finally, 14 studies were included [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] , three of which analysed the study's target population 23,25,27 , whereas the remainder focused on subgroups that met the inclusion criteria. Among these, 13 were retrospective studies [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][32][33][34][35] , three presented a propensity score analysis and one was an RCT 31 . ...

... A retrospective study conducted by Xie et al. (27) demonstrated that re-ablation is the first choice of treatment for patients with a local recurrence of HCC after an initial thermal ablation. A cohort study conducted by Kim et al. (28) showed that TACE is an effective treatment for patients with initial thermal ablation failure. However, previous studies focused on the treatment choice in HCC patients with local recurrence after a first attempt complete ablation, while the present study focused on the feasibility of repeated ablation or TACE for HCC patients following the first attempt incomplete ablation. ...

... The 1-, 3-, and 5-year OS rates did not significantly differ between the repeat resection or RFA and the TACE groups, suggesting that TACE likely was as effective as repeat resection or RFA for preventing early intrahepatic relapse following curative resection of HCC [87]. Although there is no obvious difference between RFA and TACE treatment for isolated intrahepatic recurrent HCC following LT in terms of 2-year DFS rate (20% vs 14%) and 4-year OS rate (33% vs 25%), TACE treatment seems to be more beneficial in isolated intrahepatic recurrent HCC patients following LT when RFA therapy is not suitable [104]. In contrast to TACE-alone treatment for intrahepatic recurrent HCC after hepatectomy, apatinib, a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 inhibitor, in conjunction with TACE significantly improved the median PFS, short-term objective responses, and disease control rate, and had a tendency of increasing the 1-and 2-year OS rates [105]. ...

... Due to the deficiency of effective biomarkers, there is a great challenge to screen HCC in liver cirrhosis and HCC patients. Although, the elevated AFP level was a risk factor for HCC development [31,32], it was inappropriate for HCC screening because of its poor diagnostic sensitivity (39%-65%) [5]. Results in Figure 3 revealed that HCC group had the maximum elevated levels of serum AFP followed by cirrhosis and then healthy group. ...

... In their study, the target tumor volume, along with a virtual safety margin, is segmented from CT or MRI images and overlaid on real-time US images. The tumor coverage can then be evaluated in combination with contrast-enhanced US. Park et al. [15] demonstrated the feasibility of fusing real-time 2D US with 3D US images for guidance in RFA in 2-5 cm diameter liver tumors. Guided by the fused 2D/3D US images, an ablation region covering the entire tumor could be achieved by overlapping the individual ablation zones of multiple applicators. ...

... Their effectiveness is restricted by patient anatomy and deployment positioning; hydro-and pneumo-dissection media are subject to gravity and pressure-dependent redirection from the injection site, causing poor retention time from media pooling in other anatomical regions. [15][16][17][18] The ephemeral nature of Figure 1. Functional requirements for tissue dissection and gel-dissection overview a) Desired separation of organs using dissection media; b) Case study demonstrating the limitations of SoC dissection procedures:1) A patient with oligometastatic HCC presented for ablation of multiple lesions: one in segment II of the liver was located adjacent to the stomach, making them a non-surgical candidate and precluding direct MWA, 2) Fluid hydrodissection failed, in which contrast injection showed poor distension and dissipated away from the injection site to lower pressure regions in the peritoneal cavity, 3) Pneumo-dissective air injected for anterior abdomen showed minimal protection and dissipated to the top of the abdominal space, 4) Deployment of an inflated balloon eventually displaced the stomach from the tumor, but only after challenging and lengthy maneuvering (totaling hours of attempts); c) Functionalities of gel-dissection enabled by tunable gel properties; d) Comparison of functionality achievable by gel-dissection presented herein compared to SoC methods; e) Tissue displacement achieved herein by the tunable gel-dissection platform, both between tissues (inter-tissue; top) and within tissues (intra-tissue; bottom). ...

... Regardless of whether gastric cancer has metastasis to a single organ or multiple organs, the treatment will be difficult [4]. Therefore, accurate monitoring of gastric cancer metastasis will help us treat gastric cancer in a timely manner to prevent poor prognosis [5,6]. However, effective monitoring methods for gastric cancer metastasis are limited. ...

... In case of non spherical tumors, a tailored cluster can be assembled before the procedure based on preoperative imaging. Electrodes should be firmly attached to the body of the cluster to avoid deviation [133] and should be stiff enough to avoid bending, both resulting in non-parallel placement [136]. ...

... Fusion imaging can also reduce false-positive lesion detection during US-guided RFA and consistently improve the detection of HCCs, especially when these are smaller than 2 cm. The ability of fusion imaging to reduce false positives also applies to the evaluation of local tumor progression after RFA and TACE (31,32). ...

... However, all tumors planned for ablation were located in hard-to-reach areas in the liver or adjacent to essential organs. It was sometimes thought that, for tumors very close to vital structures, percutaneous ablation procedures could be harmful and contraindicated because of the possibility of either mechanical or thermal damage 5,6,19,20 . This thought could be an obstacle to the treatment of patients. ...