Recovery
After the RFA procedure, the patient goes to recovery. The typical recovery is overnight, and the patient goes home the next day, although length of stay depends on how the patient feels and how many ablations were needed.

Patients can generally do whatever they feel up to but are asked to take it easy for a couple of days, avoiding strenuous exercise, yard work, or other excessive physical activity. Most people have some mild cramping or dull aching pain in their abdomen or area where the ablation occurred. Most people run a low-grade fever for a couple of days afterwards, as part of the body’s response to dead tissue. A few people are occasionally nauseated. We routinely put patients on antibiotics for about a week and send them home with some oral pain medication.

Follow-up
Follow-up regimen depends on what problem was treated, in what area of the body, and how large an area was ablated. In general, patients wait a period of three months after the procedure and then undergo the same or similar imaging as was done immediately prior to the ablation so doctors can assess the effect of the RFA. The main thing the doctors look for in this follow-up study are recurrence of tumor, residual tumor that was not killed, or some sort of complication.

Side Effects and Complications
RFA kills the tumor cells but leaves the dead cells in the body. Most of the time, the body absorbs the dead tissue by various mechanisms. There are cells in the body that absorb dead tissue, as there is a normal turnover of cells in the body all the time. Dead cells resulting from RFA can be reabsorbed in the same way. With larger the tumors, frequently the dead tumor cells turn into more of a fluid state, which stays in that area of the body, resembling a cyst. Usually, the cyst does not cause problems, although it can if it gets infected. If the tumor was not creating pressure on other structures in the body, the remaining dead tissue probably will not either.

Patients can have a systemic reaction to RFA. Because you do not cut the tissue out and remove it, the body responds to the dead tissue that is left. Common reactions to the dead tissue left in the body include fever, pain, and on rare occasions, nausea and vomiting. Also, the patient needs to be monitored for possible infection of the dead tissue.

Another risk of RFA is bleeding. Any time you put a needle or probe into the body, there is always a risk of compromising blood vessels, which can lead to bleeding. Finally, just as you sometimes cannot cut out the entire tumor in surgery, sometimes you cannot kill all of the tumor cells with RFA, and any residual tumor cells can grow in the future.

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