Local Hyperthermia Reinforced by Thermotherapy As an Adjuvant Therapy for Limb Salvage

Summary

Local hyperthermia with chemotherapy is very attractive as a preoperative treatment for successful limb salvage. However, many problems still remain unsolved, such as its efficiency, its eligibility, selection of suitable drugs, determination of the route of administration of the drugs. In this report, such problems in local thermochemother-apy (with methotrexate, adriamycin, and cis-platinum) are discussed.

Sprague-Dawley rats, to which tibia MRMT-1 carcinoma had been implanted, underwent local hyperthermia with or without chemotherapy on day 10 after transplantation of the tumor (intratumoral temperature, 43°C; duration of heating, 1 h). The experimental animals were killed on day 30 after transplantation and the status of the local tumor and pulmonary metastasis were examined.

The tumor growth suppressive effect even in the local hyperthermia only group, was superior to that of the control group. In the thermochemotherapy groups (except for one group), a far better result in suppression of the tumor growth was shown. Especially with the method of intra-arterial infusion, the effect was remarkable regardless of the kind of drugs used. For suppression of pulmonary metastasis, intra-arterial infusion with thermotherapy also showed a superior result to that of the groups of other therapeutic regimens, and this tendency was again independent of the kind of drugs used.