Destroying Cancerous Tumors with Hyperthermia

An innovative hyperthermia system kills cancer cells and boosts the effectiveness of other cancer therapies including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.

The BSD 500 is a portable, space efficient, and easy to operate interstitial microwave hyperthermia system that delivers precision-focused heat energy to cancer tumors in the body. The system is used frequently in combination with radiation therapy to enhance treatment effects, due to its ability to make the cancer cells more sensitive to radiation. Typical treatment sites include the breast, prostate, head and neck sites, colorectal cancer, skin melanoma, carcinomas, and sarcomas. Treatment is typically delivered twice per week prior to radiation treatments.

The system is equipped with a solid-state generator with eight channels that can be independently adjusted in phase and amplitude. The eight-channel generator feeds into a 3-way power splitter, therefore allowing up to 24 applicators to be connected. Closed-end radiopaque, nonpyrogenic, sterile catheters are furnished to use for insertion of the temperature probes into a tissue mass. An advanced microwave generation system allowing the operator to electronically direct and shape the pattern of hyperthermia treatments to the shape and size of the tumor, and a high resolution touch screen display provides continuous monitoring and control. The system works under the Microsoft Windows XP operating system and includes user and diagnostic programs, hyperthermia treatment procedures, interstitial pretreatment planning program, and automatic calculation of real-time thermal dose, temperature monitoring procedures, and a system for recall monitoring. The BSD-500 Hyperthermia system is a product of BSD Medical (BSD, Salt Lake City, UT, USA).

"When the tumor is of larger size, it is unresectable surgically. Also, radiation has less effect on the center part of the tumor, which is deprived of the oxygen blood supply and the nutrients,” said Nasir Syed, M.D., of Long Beach Memorial Center (CA, USA). "…Increasing the temperature of the tissues from 42-44 ºC (hyperthermia) increases the circulation, increases the oxygenation, so that the radiation is more effective.”

Clinical studies using the BSD hyperthermia systems in conjunction with radiation therapy have shown that 83.7% of patients had some tumor regression, 37.4% of patients had a complete tumor regression, and 24.5% had a greater than 50% tumor regression. An analysis of treatment effects also found that approximately 10% of patients experienced burns and blistering from heating, 8% experienced pain, 4% experienced ulceration from rapid tumor necrosis, and 2% experienced ulceration from placement of temperature sensors and rapid tumor necrosis.

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