Hyperthermia for Cancer Treatment

What is Hyperthermia?

Hyperthermia is a method of treating cancer without side effects and without pain. Hyperthermia is a treatment method that, among other things, destroys malignant cells in the body using high heat.

More than 100 years ago, doctors noticed spontaneous tumor regressions in cancer patients who had been ill with a high fever for several days. This observation led researchers to conclude that cancer cells are not resistant to high temperatures.

Following the above, devices were developed that work to introduce high heat into the areas of the cancerous tumor.

The equipment currently used in hospitals and medical centers around the world uses radio waves to introduce heat deep into the body in the area of the tumor.

The deep regional treatment is called Local Regional Deep Hyperthermia (LRDH).

Damage to cancer cells occurs starting at a temperature of 42 degrees Celsius, so the hyperthermia devices currently in use introduce heat from 42 to 56 degrees into the body.

How does hyperthermia work to treat cancer?

Introducing heat into the body causes damage to the tumor in several ways:

• The high heat causes the destruction of proteins in the cancer cell, which build the enzymes essential for the cell’s function. The destruction of the proteins causes the cancer cell to enter a state of “apoptosis” (a state of self-destruction of the cell).

• The high heat causes blood vessels in the tumor area to become blocked, which prevents oxygen and nutrients from reaching the cancer cell, causing it to die due to a lack of these essential substances.
  
  
• The heat shock that the cancer cell receives causes it to produce proteins called “heat shock proteins” (HSP). These proteins accumulate on the cancer cell’s envelope to protect it from further heat shock. However, it turns out that the HSP proteins are “foreign” proteins, which are not recognized by the body’s immune system cells, so the immune system’s blood cells attack the cancer cells that contain these proteins and try to destroy them.
  
  
• The blood vessels in the tumor area are narrow and tortuous, blood flow is slow, and therefore the heat generated as a result of the hyperthermia device remains in the cancer tissue for a long time.

Hyperthermia – a selective cancer treatment method that only affects cancer cells without causing damage to healthy cells and without side effects.

Healthy cells can regenerate intracellular proteins more quickly than cancer cells.

Healthy cells do not produce heat shock proteins (HSP) and do not cause an immune system response.

The difference between the great damage that hyperthermia causes to cancer cells and the lack of damage to healthy cells makes this method a selective treatment method, in which the damage is focused on cancer cells only, unlike chemotherapy and radiation treatments, which damage both cancer cells and healthy cells. This makes it possible to treat cancer even in areas where radiation cannot be treated, and it is also possible for patients in poor general condition, who are unable to undergo difficult treatments in a hospital.

Combining Hyperthermia with Other Treatment Methods

In published medical studies, it has been found that combining hyperthermia with certain types of chemotherapy improves the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Hence, it is a synergistic combination, in which the combined effect is higher than the sum of the effects of each drug alone. Drugs such as Gemzar, Taxol, Adriamycin, Doxil, and more have been proven to be synergistic when given in combination with hyperthermia.

Many studies have shown that combining hyperthermia and radiation doubles the effectiveness of radiation.