SIR Responds to COLLISION Trial Results on Thermal Ablation for Colorectal Liver Metastases

We welcome the promising news from ASCO regarding the outcome of the COLLISION trial, a phase 3, noninferiority, randomized controlled trial comparing thermal ablation to traditional surgery, which was stopped at halftime for having met predefined stopping rules.

The COLLISION trial’s presenting authors concluded that the standard of care for small-sized colorectal liver metastases should be transitioned from surgery to thermal ablation based on the overwhelming data collected in the trial. The authors found that ablation as standard of care would “reduce complications, shorten hospital stays and improve local control, without compromising disease-free and overall survival.”

This is tremendous news for patients around the world. Thermal ablation is a minimally invasive treatment performed under image guidance often by an interventional radiologist, who inserts probes into a tumor and applies thermal energy to destroy it. Interventional radiologists are uniquely suited to offer thermal ablation due to their extensive training in imaging, image-guided treatments, and clinical care.

We hope the full data are published soon so we can operationalize this treatment in the field, move the standard of care forward and give patients new hope for not just treatment but recovery.

We congratulate Martijn Ruben Meijerink, MD, and his team at the Amsterdam University Medical Center for their groundbreaking research.