The search for alternative epicardial energy sources in the treatment of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (AF) is a relatively new aspect of the evolving spectrum of Maze operations. We tested the hypothesis that epicardial microwave ablation produces identical results to those of the standard cryosurgical Maze. Fourteen consecutive patients with chronic AF underwent on-pump epicardial Maze proc...

An 89 year old woman had a two-month history of vaginal bleeding. Vaginal ultrasound examination showed an expanded endometrium. An outpatient endometrial biopsy was performed, which showed a moderately differentiated grade 2 endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma. Magnetic resonance imaging suggested that the tumour was minimally invasive and confined to the uterus (Fig. 1). The woman had lim...

Minimally invasive therapies are gaining increasing attention as an alternative to standard surgical therapies in the treatment of primary hepatocellular carcinoma. These include therapies administered transcatheterally (arterial embolization, intraarterial chemoinfusion, and combination chemoembolization) and percutaneously (chemical ablation with ethanol or acetic acid, and thermal ablation w...

BACKGROUND In the advanced stages of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a tumor thrombus (TT) can form in the portal or hepatic vein. The management of patients with advanced HCC and a TT extending into the right atrium (RA) and inferior vena cava (IVC) is extremely difficult and risky. CASE PRESENTATION We report the case of a patient with HCC and a large TT (85 × 45 mm) extending into the RA t...

Until recently the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF) consisted primarily of palliation, mostly in the form of pharmacological intervention. However because of recent advances in nonpharmacologic therapies, the current expectation of patients and referring physicians is that AF will be cured, rather than palliated. In recent years there has been a rapid expansion in the availability and vari...

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is currently the most popular and used ablation modality for the treatment of non surgical patients with primary and secondary liver tumors, but in the last years microwave ablation (MWA) is being technically improved and widely rediscovered for clinical use. Laser thermal ablation (LTA) is by far less investigated and used than RFA and MWA, but the available data ...