Researcher tests heat therapy for treating cancer

HOUSTON, Texas, Dec. 9, 2005 – An oncologist at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston is researching the effectiveness of thermal therapy for the treatment of several types of advanced-stage cancer.

Joan Bull, M.D., professor and director of the Center for Thermal Therapy Cancer Treatment, is recruiting patients with inoperable or metastatic neuroendocrine tumors or cancers of the gastric system, small bowel, lung, head or neck. She is also testing the therapy on patients with melanoma. In a separate trial, she is investigating the benefits of hyperthermia, or heating of the body to a fever-like state, in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer.

Those who qualify will receive a combination of chemotherapy and total-body thermal therapy, which temporarily elevates the patient’s normal body temperature. The therapy will be administered once a month and patients will be given light sedation during each eight-hour treatment session.

Bull said evidence shows that heat can increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatments. By itself, heat can also increase the ability of the body’s own immune system to kill cancer cells. The research is being conducted in the General Clinical Research Center at Memorial Hermann Hospital. For information, call 713-500-6820 or visit www.uth.tmc.edu./thermaltherapy/.

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