The word “cancer” often means death to people, and doctors are working tirelessly to find a cure. In particular, surgical resection has always been the most popular treatment method among all. However, with the continuous progress of medical science, is surgical resection still strong? Is there any latest treatment that can achieve the effect of surgical resection while avoiding major surgical operations? Taking liver cancer, the most common cancer in our department, as an example, let’s explore this question. Liver cancer is one of the most common tumors in China, and about 50% of liver cancers in the world occur in China. Facing such a highly prevalent tumor, what is our way to cope with it? I think the first response of many people is surgical treatment. It is true that from the first successful surgical resection of liver cancer in the world in 1891 to the research on liver surgical anatomy and liver physiology and biochemistry in the 1950s and 1960s, which laid the foundation for surgical resection, surgical resection has been regarded as the “gold standard” of liver cancer treatment for more than 100 years. Surgical resection of liver cancer has undergone many leaps and bounds, from regular resection of large liver cancer, to local irregular resection of small liver cancer, to second-stage resection of unresectable liver cancer after treatment, which has greatly improved the surgical resection rate. With the improvement of perioperative treatment and quality of care, the mortality rate of liver surgery is also decreasing, and some are even able to reach zero mortality. The incidence of complications is also able to reach less than 10%. However, more than 85% of liver cancer patients in China have different degrees of hepatitis, cirrhosis and poor liver reserve capacity. In addition, liver cancer patients have insidious onset and early symptoms are not obvious, which makes liver cancer patients miss the best surgery period. Only 10%-20% of the patients can really undergo surgical resection. Even for small hepatocellular carcinoma less than 5cm, if it is combined with severe cirrhosis, surgical resection will still cause great trauma to the liver. Due to the biological characteristics of liver itself, it is very easy to recur after surgery, and some statistics show that the recurrence rate of small liver cancer patients after surgery is as high as 43.5%. Even superb surgical resection cannot solve the problem of tumor recurrence. Facing these problems, is there any method to help these inoperable patients to get rid of liver cancer? Is there any method to deal with the recurrence of tumor? With the continuous development of various auxiliary technologies such as imaging, various minimally invasive treatment technologies are applied to the treatment of liver cancer, including intervention, freezing, microwave, radiofrequency and so on. The leader among these techniques is radiofrequency ablation therapy. Its efficacy in treating small hepatocellular carcinoma has been widely accepted. Radiofrequency ablation has been identified as one of the three most important means of hepatocellular carcinoma treatment along with surgery and liver transplantation in the 2008 edition of the NCCN and the Japanese Society of Surgery Clinical Practice Guidelines for Hepatocellular Carcinoma because of its low invasiveness and good efficacy. Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a method to destroy tumor cells through coagulative necrosis of tumor cells by heating the tumor area to the effective treatment temperature range and maintaining the treatment time with radiofrequency waves emitted from the electrode under the guidance of ultrasound or CT, taking advantage of the characteristic that tumor tissues are less heat-resistant than normal tissues. Radiofrequency ablation therapy has been applied to the clinical treatment of liver cancer since the early 1990s, and with the continuous improvement of technology and equipment, its therapeutic scope has been continuously expanded. A lot of research results at home and abroad have repeatedly proved that for small hepatocellular carcinoma less than 3cm, radiofrequency ablation only takes more than 20 minutes to completely inactivate the tumor without opening the abdomen, and the mortality rate is only 0-1%, and the complication rate is less than 3%. The efficacy of radiofrequency ablation is completely comparable to that of surgical resection. It breaks the situation that surgical resection is the only means to cure liver cancer. Due to its low trauma, low damage to liver function, fast recovery after surgery, multiple retreatments are possible for newly generated recurrent cancer. For patients with large hepatocellular carcinoma that cannot be surgically resected, radiofrequency ablation can be used to achieve radical cure by repeatedly ablating multiple times. Although experts have different opinions on whether to apply surgical resection treatment or radiofrequency ablation treatment for liver cancer, it is undeniable that radiofrequency ablation is another new choice for liver cancer treatment.