Hyperthermia versus oncothermia: Cellular effects in complementary cancer therapy

Hyperthermia means overheating of the living object completely or partly. Hyperthermia, the procedure of raising the temperature of a part of or the whole body above normal for a defined period of time, is applied alone or as an adjunctive with various established cancer treatment modalities such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy. However, hyperthermia is not generally accepted as conventional therapy. The problem is its controversial performance. The controversy is originated from the complications of the deep heating and the focusing of the heat effect. The idea of oncothermia solves the selective deep action on nearly cellular resolution. We would like to demonstrate the force and perspectives of oncothermia, as a highly specialized hyperthermia in clinical oncology. Our aim is to prove the ability of oncothermia to be a candidate to become a widely accepted modality of the standard cancer care. We would like to show the proofs and the challenges of the hyperthermia and oncothermia applications to provide the presently available data and summarize the knowledge in the topic. Like many early stage therapies, oncothermia lacks adequate treatment experience and long-range, comprehensive statistics that can help us optimize its use for all indications. © 2013 Gabriella Hegyi et al