Currently, local ablative therapy competes with surgical resection and liver transplantation as primary treatment for small HCC. Various locoregional therapies are used to treat patients who are not candidates for surgery because of the severity of the underlying liver disease. Percutaneous radiofrequency thermal ablation (PRFA), a recently developed local ablative technique, has attracted the greatest interest and popularity because of its efficacy and safety [4] . Previous studies have shown PRFA to give good results from the perspective of tumor control, with complete tumor ablation rates of 90 to 95%, and low local tumor progression rates of 5 to 10% [5] [6] [7] [8] . Prospective randomized trials have shown PRFA to be better than percutaneous ethanol injection (PEI) in producing a higher rate of complete ablation with fewer numbers of treatment sessions [9] . However, there is still debate with regard to whether PRFA or SR is the most suitable therapy of small HCC.