Table 2. Study design.

Authors	Period of inclusion	Number of patients	Pure laparoscopy	Laparoscopic Hand-assisted	Hybrid technique
Lai EC et al. (22)	January 1998-december 2007	25	3	21	0
Lee KF et al. (23)	June 2004-march 2010	33	33	0	0
Kobayashi S et al. (24)	1997-2011	56	24	3	29
Kaneko H et al. (25)	15 years	39	33	2	4
Shimada M et al. (26)	1994-2000	17	17	0	0
Teramoto K et al. (27)	May 1997-April 2003	33*	15	0	0
Cheung TT et al. (28)	October 2002-september 2009	32	26	6	0
Hu BS et al. (29)	January 2006-January 2011	30	30	0	0
Yoon YS et al. (4)	September 2003- November 2008	69	69	0	0
Chen HY et al. (30)**	1998-2006	116	116	0	0
Sasaki A et al. (31)	May 2007-April 2008	37	37	0	0
Kim HH et al. (32)	July 2005-December2009	26	26	0	0
Kanazawa A et al. (33)	2006-2010	28	23	2	5

*, including 18 thermal ablation; **, group I (GI) (≤2 segments) and group II (G2) (>2 segments).