Lin 2005.

Methods	Randomised clinical trial. Recruitment: April 2000 to June 2002. Country: Taiwan.
Participants	187 participants: 62 RFTA, 62 PEI, 63 PAI. Child A/Child B: RFTA 46/16, PEI 47/15, PAI 45/18.
Interventions	RFTA versus PEI versus PAI.
Outcomes	Primary outcome: local recurrence. Secondary outcome: overall survival, cancer‐free survival.
Inclusion criteria	1 to 3 HCC nodules each ≤ 3 cm. 1‐cm distance to hepatic hilum. Absence of hepatic metastasis or vascular invasion. Child A or B. PTT < 3 seconds, platelets > 50,000/mm3. No previous treatment.
Exclusion criteria	Child C. Previous HCC treatment. Tumour located within 1 cm of the liver hilum or common bile duct.
Follow‐up	4 to 44 months.
Notes	4.8% major complications in RFTA, 0% in the PAI and PEI groups.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	Computer randomisation.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	List not available for treating physicians.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Not described. Survival outcomes may not be significantly influences by a lack of blinding.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	There were no drop‐outs.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	We judged this trial free of selective reporting.
Other bias	Low risk	We did not detect any other potential bias.
Academic bias	Low risk	The same group performed another randomised clinical trial at the same time. Participants were assigned to 1 of the parallel trials depending on hospital admission during alternative weeks (Lin 2004). Previous retrospective trial on PEI for HCC.
Overall risk assessment	Low risk	Low risk of bias.