Therapy of Fibrosarcoma in the Rectum of Rats by Selective Hyperthermia

Abstract

It is known that the difference in heat tolerance between normal and malignant tissues is rather small, approximately in the range of 0.2°–0.4° C. Nevertheless, numerous attempts have been made to use this small difference for tumor therapy. The methods tried were whole-body hyperthermia, local heating with high-frequency diathermia, or selective perfusion with heated blood; most of these experiments failed. It appears that the main difficulty is to establish an effective temperature of 44.0° C with the needed accuracy of ±0.1° C in a tissue in which arterial inflow is 37° C, i.e., 7° C below the curative temperature.