[Clinical impact of locoregional hyperthermia in gynecological oncology]

In the last decade progress in gynecological oncology has been achieved mainly by new cytotoxic drugs and advances in radiation technology. For example, the use of taxanes in the primary therapy of ovarian cancers and of combined radio-chemotherapy in cervical cancer has led to significant prolongations of survival. However, in case of relapse most gynaecological malignancies are associated with very poor prognosis. Efficacy of local and systemic therapy can be increased by combining radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy with locoregional hyperthermia (LRH). Increasing the temperature of the target tissue up to 41-43 degrees C leads to local hyperaemia and the tumor tissue becomes more responsive to cytotoxic interventions. In several prospective randomized studies the combination between LRH and radiotherapy was superior to radiotherapy alone in terms of local control (e. g. chest wall recurrence in breast cancer) and has led to longer overall survival in advanced cervical cancer. Platinum derivatives and other cytotoxic drugs have shown synergistic effects with LRH and the combination of both has elicited high response rates in recurrent cervical cancer. In phase-II-clinical trials the newly developed liposomal anthracyclines demonstrated synergistic effects with LRH in patients with refractory ovarian cancer. Our own experience has shown that adding LRH to radio- and/or chemotherapy is well tolerated by the patients. Despite of the fact, that the available data are still preliminary, the inclusion of LRH into multimodal cancer therapy concepts appears to be very promising. Well-designed comparative studies are still needed to evaluate the role of hyperthermia as an adjunct to conventional cancer therapy.