As a form of treatment, hyperthermia has had very limited success when used by itself. In one study, only 13 percent of superficial tumors treated with hyperthermia alone had a "complete response"—in other words, disappeared completely. But many studies in patients with superficial malignancies have shown benefits when hyperthermia is added to radiation therapy .
A review of 15 studies revealed a complete response rate of 37 percent for tumors treated with radiation alone, and 63 percent for tumors treated with radiation and hyperthermia. The tumor response was often evaluated by comparing the results with different tumors in the same patients. In these same-patient comparisons, the complete response rate was 31 percent for tumors treated with radiation alone versus 71 percent for tumors treated with radiation and hyperthermia.
Superficial hyperthermia has been used successfully in combination with radiation therapy to treat:
• chest wall recurrences of breast cancer after a mastectomy and/or radiation therapy
• advanced primary breast cancer
• advanced or recurrent tumors involving lymph nodes containing metastatic cancer
• recurrent primary or metastatic melanoma in the skin or in tissues just under the skin
