Radiation Therapy in Combination with Hyperthermia as an Adjunct Therapy in Breast Cancer

Introduction: The use of heat for cancer therapy is probably one of the oldest cancer therapies method that is known. Actually based on history which is recorded, the first use of hyperthermia can be found in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, in which a breast cancer patient was treated with hyperthermia (M. R. Horsman et al.2007, Eric J Hall).Therapeutic hyperthermia has been used as an Adjunct treatment modality for cancer since end of the 19thcentry after observations William Coley who found that tumor is remission after induction of fever by bacterial toxins. Method: Regarding HT can applied alone or in combination with RT or chemotherapy, it can also be used after surgery for recurrent breast cancer patients .Typically there are three categories for Hyperthermia, including local, regional and whole body.(van et al 2012) Local hyperthermia is used to solid ,localized and superficial tumors while regional is generally used for deeper diseases, and whole body hyperthermia typically used for metastatic cancers. Now days based on many clinical trial researches, HT may be as the best method for its role in the treatment of breastcancer. Locally recurrent breast cancer on the chest wall is probably the primary clinical situation in which the use of HT has been investigated because of the frequency of this clinical scenario, as well as its superficial nature, which facilitates heating. (principals and practice of radiation oncology,perez.2013) Certainly a lot of clinical trial has been published ever, generally demonstrated positive effect for theaddition effect of HT to RT. Nonetheless, significant improvement in the complete response rate of patients receiving HT+RT was demonstrated, with 59% complete response in the combined treatment group and 41% of those receiving HT alone .based on results of this study, the great different were pronounced in patients who had been irradiated previously (Vernon .et al.1996 ). So HT as an adjunct to Radiotherapy is more effective for recurrent breast cancer in the past three decade. An clinical trial was carried out by international group combination 5 trials that started at 198 to 1991,to evaluation the effectiveness of HT plus RT in primary and also recurrent breast cancer. Result of This study show complete response (CR) rate 41% for RT alone and 59% for RT + HT (p < 0.001). Coincidentally, significant improvement in the complete response rate was in recurrent breast cancer patients Conclusion: In conclusion, Re-irradiation and hyperthermia applied to patients with breast cancer recurrence can have additive effect and improve the treatment outcome in comparison with RT alone

Keywords:

Hyperthermia , Radiation therapy , Breast Cancer