Hepatocellular carcinoma (hereafter referred to as liver cancer) has a high incidence in China, with an annual incidence of about 500,000, accounting for more than 50% of the global incidence, and is the second leading cause of cancer death in China. For more than half a century, China has invested a lot in basic and clinical research on liver cancer, and the results are quite fruitful. However, nationwide, the overall efficacy of liver cancer has not been substantially improved. The great contrast between input and output reflects the gap in systemic thinking and holistic management of liver cancer in China, and the established treatment model needs to be further optimized and reshaped. Based on the understanding of medical humanities, we deeply perceive the humanistic needs of liver cancer patients The object of medicine is people, not disease. The greatest desire of patients to cure the disease is to prolong their lives to the greatest extent possible on the premise that the quality of life and the value of life are not reduced or basically not reduced. The purpose of medicine is to help patients recover or alleviate their illness by treating the disease. The humanistic essence of medicine is to help, including the care of the state of life, the maintenance of the dignity of life and the respect for the value of life. If doctors excessively pursue survival time in the process of treating diseases, excessively pursue the feelings of the doctors themselves and ignore the feelings of patients, especially ignore the consideration of patients’ humanistic needs, it is a deviation from patients’ wishes and a betrayal of medical humanism. Based on the progress of basic research on liver cancer and systematic understanding of liver cancer characteristics modern research has concluded that liver cancer is a genetic disease with obvious genetic differences among individuals, which is reflected in clinical aspects with great differences in invasion, metastatic ability and drug sensitivity. At the pathological level, the actual extent of hepatocellular carcinoma is much larger than that seen on imaging due to a certain range of microvenous infiltration area around the cancer foci, and the peri-cancerous microvenous infiltration foci are often greater than 1 cm or even more than 2 cm from the main cancer foci shown on imaging. Moreover, once hepatocellular carcinoma occurs, it is as if the whole liver has turned on a switch and each part has the potential to develop hepatocellular carcinoma. The occurrence of multiple cancer foci at the same time is the multifocal feature of liver cancer, and the occurrence of multiple cancer foci successively is the multi-stage feature of liver cancer. Another characteristic of hepatocellular carcinoma is that it often grows on the diseased liver. Since the functional status of the liver after treatment will directly affect the efficacy, the protection of liver function is considered to be an important component of the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. Based on the above understanding, we summarize the characteristics of liver cancer as follows: First, the biological behavior of liver cancer is “innate”, not progressively malignant with the growth of liver cancer as previously recognized. This means that liver cancer with strong metastatic ability can develop distant metastasis at an early stage. Secondly, liver cancer is never just a “lump” on the liver, but the number and scope of cancer foci around the lump are too large to be seen clearly according to current medical conditions. Third, liver cancer is not a single lesion, but may have multiple lesions at the same time. Liver cancer is usually not a one-stage disease, and once a stage of the disease is cured, it will not be over once and for all. Fourthly, liver cancer grows on the diseased liver, so the treatment of liver cancer must be “liver-based”. In short, liver cancer is characterized as “difficult to understand the temper, difficult to see the scope, difficult to ‘take a bold step’, and difficult to cure all at once”. Based on the characteristics of hepatocellular carcinoma, the established treatment model for hepatocellular carcinoma is a comprehensive treatment mainly based on surgical resection and supplemented by other treatment methods. With this treatment principle as the guide, the treatment path for liver cancer is usually: resection (referring to hepatectomy) if it can be done, replacement (referring to liver transplantation) if it should be done, and embolization (referring to transarterial interventional embolization) if it cannot be done or replaced. Hepatectomy, as a traditional treatment for liver cancer, has been clinically used for more than half a century. Its advantage is that it is more intuitive and efficient to remove liver cancer; its disadvantage is that the surgery is traumatic, difficult, costly, narrow indications and difficult to be repeatedly applied. Due to patients’ willingness, family conditions, liver function reserve, size and location of liver cancer, only 10-20% of liver cancer patients undergo hepatic resection. Even so, there are still a significant number of patients with “unsatisfactory” outcomes. This small percentage of beneficiaries is far from what one would expect. Liver transplantation is the most ideal treatment for liver cancer because it can remove the liver cancer lesion to the greatest extent possible, replace the “liver where the liver cancer occurred”, and cure the underlying cause of the liver lesion such as viral hepatitis. However, liver transplantation is not widely available due to shortage of donor livers and high costs. Transarterial interventional embolization is the most commonly used treatment for liver cancer in China, but it is only effective for the main cancer foci of liver cancer and has no obvious therapeutic effect on the peri-cancerous micro-venous infiltrated area, so it cannot be used as the only treatment but only as an auxiliary means. Based on the analysis of the above treatment means for liver cancer, it seems that we can summarize the traditional treatment model of liver cancer as follows: this model highlights the traditional status of surgical resection, especially hepatectomy, in the comprehensive treatment of liver cancer, however, its universality is insufficient and lacks scientific guidance for most liver cancer patients. At this point, it is easy to understand why the overall outcome of liver cancer patients has not improved significantly over the past 50 years. Based on the progress and advantages of local ablation therapy, a new model of liver cancer treatment is called for. Local ablation therapy is a widely used treatment for liver cancer in the past decade or so, and its status in the comprehensive treatment of liver cancer is increasing because of its definite efficacy, high safety, low trauma, low cost and repeatable application. Local ablation therapy is a large family, including radiofrequency ablation, anhydrous alcohol injection, microwave ablation, and so on. Among them, radiofrequency ablation is its typical representative. Its principle of treating liver cancer is to cause ions in tumor tissues to oscillate and heat up through radiofrequency current, and the local humidity can reach up to 120℃, so as to coagulate and destroy tumor. Radiofrequency ablation has three major features in the treatment of liver cancer: firstly, the curative efficacy is exact. A large amount of clinical data shows that for early-stage liver cancer, the efficacy of radiofrequency ablation is not significantly different from that of hepatectomy and liver transplantation. Because of this, radiofrequency ablation, hepatectomy and liver transplantation are called the three major curative methods for liver cancer. Second, universality. Since radiofrequency ablation treatment requires less liver function, less age and physical condition of patients, and less site requirement for liver cancer, and can be performed through three major paths: percutaneous puncture, laparoscopy and open abdomen, it can be used as both curative and adjuvant means, so it has better universality in use and can benefit most patients. Thirdly, it can meet the humanistic needs of liver cancer patients to the greatest extent. Radiofrequency ablation therapy is less invasive, has faster postoperative recovery, lower hospitalization cost and can be used repeatedly. These minimally invasive advantages enable most patients to continue the work they did before they got sick, maintain their previous income and keep the social status they had before they got sick. The above advantages of radiofrequency ablation therapy show us where hope lies for most liver cancer patients, and give us reason to look forward to a new model of liver cancer treatment. We believe that as long as we can raise the awareness of liver cancer screening among liver cancer-prone people and strengthen systematic management measures such as early diagnosis of liver cancer, liver cancer can be detected at an early stage or most of them can be detected at an early stage. The overall efficacy of liver cancer will be significantly improved.