Effect of hyperthermia in combination with chemotherapy and radiation therapy for treatment of urological cancer: Prostate cancer and urothelial cancer

Abstract

This report describes the clinical result of hyperthermia for urological cancer; first, the effects of regional hyperthermia combined with low-dose anticancer drugs for the treatment of 7 high-grade prostate cancer patients with Gleason scores of 8 or higher. The combination therapy resulted in three cases in CR and four cases in PR based on the PSA level. One patient with Stage D2 died (duration of survival 132 months), but six survived. The duration of survival ranged from 9 to 156 months with 20 months of median survival time. No severe side effects were observed in any of the seven patients, so they were able to undergo treatment without discontinuation. Thus, the treatment was proven to be effective for high-grade prostate cancer, contributing to long-term survival of the patients. In addition, regional hyperthermia combined with low-dose anticancer drugs (CDDP, gemcitabine and MMC) was similar to prostate cancer, administered to urothelial cancer patients (5 patients with renal pelvis cancer, 3 patients with ureter cancer and 10 patients with bladder cancer). The treatment resulted in CR: 7 cases, PR: 3 cases, NC: 1 case, and PD: 7 cases with 8 patients deceased (duration of survival: 9-91 months, median 24 months). The rest of the patients are still alive. Thus the result indicates that the treatment is able to prolong survival of urothelial cancer patients, similar to prostate cancer patients.