[Multimodality therapy of colorectal cancer]

Multimodality therapy for colorectal cancer is composed of surgery, chemotherapy and irradiation; and hyperthermia joins them recently. As patients with operable colorectal cancer are a good candidate for a chemotherapeutic approach, we began postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy since 1971. On the other hand, our treatment policy towards inoperable cases is various treatments combined with the four therapies described above. The most patients with hepatic metastasis are unamenable for surgery, and they have been mainly treated with intra-arterial chemotherapy. With conventional infusion treatment, however, the infusion drugs are eliminated rapidly from the drainage vein. Thus, we prepared biodegradable albumin microspheres containing MMC (mean diameter 45 +/- 8 micron); and in 6 patients with liver metastasis, we infused MMC microspheres into the proper hepatic artery, with marked tumor regression. Hyperthermia treatment has been performed with ThermaTech 2000 (International Institute for Medical Sciences, U.S.A.), which has a complete capacitive, 3-channel, "crossfire" heating system operating by RF at 13.56 MHz. Six patients with local recurrence and/or hepatic metastasis were treated by hyperthermia combined with chemotherapy or irradiation, with a fair success in tumor response and improvement of subjective symptoms.