Study	Reason for exclusion
Abdelaziz 2014	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Azab 2011	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Casaccia 2015	Not a randomised clinical trial
Chen 2014	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Feng 2012	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Ferrari 2007	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Fukushima 2015	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Gallo 1998	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Goldberg 2002	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Habib 2002	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Hirakawa 2013	Variations in radiofrequency ablation
Hou 2009	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Huang 2005	Inadequate randomisation (groups were adjusted to equalise numbers)
Huo 2003	Not a randomised clinical trial
Hyun 2016	Not a randomised clinical trial
Kobayashi 2007	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Kuansheng 2011	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Lau 1999	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Lau 2008	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Lin 2004	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Livraghi 1999	Not a randomised clinical trial
Lo 2007	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Lu 2006a	In the control group, the ablation was performed with either radiofrequency ablation or microwave ablation and this was not determined at random.
Mizuki 2010	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Muehlbacher 2014	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Ohnishi 1998	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Okusaka 2011	Recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma. Unable to determine disease stage prior to initial treatment.
Peng 2012	Recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma. Unable to determine disease stage prior to initial treatment.
Pinter 2015	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Shen 2005	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Shibata 2006	Not a randomised clinical trial
Shibata 2009	Not a randomised clinical trial
Shiozawa 2015	Not a randomised clinical trial
Sun 2016	Not a randomised clinical trial
van Malenstein 2011	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Wu 2015	Variations in surgical resection
Xu 2012a	Randomised after resection. Unable to determine disease stage prior to surgery.
Xu 2013	Randomised after resection. Unable to determine disease stage prior to initial treatment.
Xu 2015	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Yi 2014	In this randomised clinical trial, the decision to perform radiofrequency ablation or microwave ablation was not random.
Yu 2014	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Yu 2016	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma
Zhang 2002	Not a randomised clinical trial
Zhang 2007	Not in very early or early hepatocellular carcinoma