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Medical Professionals
ThermaSolutions has built our proprietary technology on the following scientific foundations:
- Living tissue is susceptible to destruction by heat (generally>45C).1
- An elevated body temperature, or fever (between 37.5 and 41C), does have a beneficial effect on the outcome of infections.2
- At temperatures between those of natural fevers and outright tissue destruction (between 41C and 45C), heat may have a therapeutic role because pathogens are more thermosensitive than normal tissue.3
- Hyperthermia damages the membrances, cytoskeleton, and nucleus functions of malignant cells.
- Hyperthermia causes irreversible damage to cellular perspiration of these cells. Heat at 42 C also pushes cancer cells towards acidosis, which decreases the cells’ viability and transplatability.
- Heat is known to stimulate the immune system causing both increased production of interferon alpha and increased immune surveillance.
Physicians using the ThermoChem HT 1000 system during a HIPEC procedure use conventional chemotherapy drugs heated to a temperature that kill cancer cells. By bathing the abdomen with heated chemotherapy immediately following surgery, a higher dose of medication can be used than would normally be tolerated by a patient if given intravenously throughout the body; the traditional way chemotherapy is administered.
Doctors estimate that 30 percent of patients with advanced colon cancer would benefit from surgery with HIPEC. The published data on the treatment of patients with Stage IV colorectal cancer, with combinations of tumor removal surgery and chemotherapy, showed a median survival of greater than 20 months, compared to six-month survival with traditional intravenous chemotherapy alone.
1 - Pathobiology of Hyperthermia: Roger A. Vertrees, Ph.D., C.C.P., Dept. of Surgery, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas
2 - Pathobiology of Hyperthermia: Roger A. Vertrees, Ph.D., C.C.P., Dept. of Surgery, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas
3 - Pathobiology of Hyperthermia: Roger A. Vertrees, Ph.D., C.C.P., Dept. of Surgery, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas
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