If a patient has very limited disease and can undergo surgery, in many cases that would be the best option because surgery is more likely to ensure that the cancer is eliminated. If the cancer is not advanced and is only in one small area, doctors could potentially cure the patient with surgery. Radiofrequency ablation is not necessarily meant to be a curative technique; it is best viewed as palliative. However, many people are not in the physical condition to undergo surgery, or they have been on chemotherapy and their coagulation status is never going to be normal, so surgery is not feasible. When there are no other significant options, or the other options are more invasive that desired, RFA is a good alternative treatment.

Liver Tumors
By far, the number one use of RFA is in the liver, both for primary liver tumors (cancer that initially occurred in the liver) and for metastatic liver tumors (cancer that spread to the liver from another area of the body). Just as with surgery, doctors cannot simply remove an entire organ that the body needs to function. Enough healthy liver must remain after the treatment, so RFA cannot be used to ablate a tumor larger than 30% to 40% of the liver. For the same reason, a multi-focal tumor with numerous cancerous areas may not be able to be treated with RFA, since ablating all of the sites might not leave enough healthy tissue for the liver to function.

Bone Tumors
RFA in bone tumors is, to some extent, more experimental. RFA has been used most frequently in benign bone tumors, as opposed to malignant bone tumors. For many benign tumors, the main issue is pain. For these patients, RFA is often better than going through a somewhat deforming surgery and replacing a piece of bone.

Lung Tumors
The lung is also somewhat investigational but is very promising. Several hundred cases have been performed now. It is similar to the liver in that there cannot be too much of the lung involved and there cannot be too many sites. Like the liver, RFA of the lung has the risk of bleeding and infection, but it involves some additional risks as well. Treatment in the lung also has the risk if nemothorax (air leakage from the lung). Additionally, when the tissue heats up, gas can form. In the lung, that gas can embolize and cause problems in the vascular system. Although there is some additional risk, so far RFA of the lung seems fairly promising.

Kidney Tumors
RFA has also been done for tumors in the kidney, and it seems reasonably effective there as well.

Size and Number of Tumors
You can treat tumors that are bigger than a single probe by doing multiple ablations within the one tumor volume, or if you have multiple tumors you can individually target each one. There is not a definite rule on how many or how much can be treated at one time, but after a certain point it becomes impractical to treat. For example, if a patient has a tumor volume that is half of the liver, it is difficult to ablate that large of a volume. Furthermore, the patient might not have enough liver remaining to function properly, plus the amount of residual dead tissue would be so massive that the patient would have a greater risk of infection. Similarly, if someone has twenty separate sites to be destroyed, it is almost impossible to make that many passes and that many ablations, each time having a recurring risk of infection, bleeding, etc.

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