2023-12-15 03:15:13
New Heat Treatment Shows Promise for Head and Neck Cancer Patients
Patients with an advanced tumor in the head and neck area are typically treated with radiation, often in combination with chemotherapy or protein therapy. However, the chance of recovery with this standard treatment after 5 years is only around 50%, and the side effects can be significant.
In order to improve healing outcomes for these patients, researchers are exploring a new additional treatment option to radiation that has few additional side effects and no additional long-term damage.
One proposed solution is heat treatment, also known as thermotherapy. This involves heating the tumor and lymph nodes to 40-43 degrees Celsius, which is comparable to the temperature during a fever. The treatment would be administered weekly shortly after irradiation using a specially developed device called the Hypercollar3D, which heats the tumor and glands in a targeted manner using microwave radiation.
The potential impact of thermotherapy is significant, given that in the Netherlands alone, more than 3,000 patients are diagnosed with head and neck cancer each year, and more than 900 die from the disease annually. Thermotherapy offers a low risk of added late side effects and has a favorable cost profile, making it an attractive treatment option for both patients and society as a whole.
The research team is seeking to determine the optimal dose of heat treatment in the head and neck area that is well tolerated and has no acute or late side effects. They also aim to develop new methods for measuring the temperature in both normal and tumor tissue, which is crucial for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of the treatment.
The research will involve slowly building up the heat dose in groups of 3-6 patients in five steps, closely monitoring any side effects during and after treatment. The expected outcomes of the research include determining the optimal dosage of heat treatment and observing whether adding thermotherapy to radiation treatments leads to a better chance of healing in a clinical follow-up study with multiple institutes and more patients.
Once the optimal dose is determined and the device is commercially available to other institutions, a larger follow-up study can take place to compare the effectiveness of adding thermotherapy to radiotherapy versus the standard treatment with radiotherapy alone.
Overall, this innovative approach to treating head and neck cancer holds significant promise for improving patient outcomes and reducing the burden of this deadly disease.]
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