1 General Thoracic Surgery | www.smgebooks.com Copyright  Raveglia F.This book chapter is open access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited. State of The Art in Alternative Treatments for Lung Cancer: Thermal Ablation Therapy ABSTRACT Surgery is considered the best choice for stage I non-small cell lung cancer therapy and for selected patients with lung metastasis. However, surgery is often a high-risk procedure because of severe medical co-morbidities affecting this cohort of patients. Thermal Ablation (TA) has been recently proposed to achieve destruction of lung tumors whilst avoiding the use of general anesthesia and parenchyma resection, thereby limiting the invasiveness of the procedure. Two technique of TA based on tissue heating have been described: Radio Frequency Ablation (RFA) and Microwave Ablation (MWA). Both are mini-invasive procedures, delivering energy to the tumor through single or multiple percutaneous needles introduced under guidance of computed tomography. The procedure may be performed under conscious sedation or general anesthesia to avoid pain caused by needle insertion and tissue heating. We have reviewed the literature and Federico Raveglia 1 *, Alessandro Rizzi 1 , Matilde De Simone 3 , Ugo Cioffi 3 , Andrea Sacrini 2 and Alessandro Baisi 1 1 Thoracic Surgery, ASST Santi Paolo e Carlo, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy 2 Radiology, ASST Santi Paolo e Carlo, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy 3 IRCCS Policlinico Ca’ Granda, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy *Corresponding author: Federico Raveglia, Thoracic Surgery, ASST Santi Paolo e Carlo, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, Tel: +393381336071; Email: federico.raveglia@asst- santipaolocarlo.it Published Date: May 13, 2016 Gr up SM