Need info on Hyperthermia TX for DCIS

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cinnamonsmiles
cinnamonsmiles Member Posts: 779
edited June 2014 in DCIS (Ductal Carcinoma In Situ)

Does anyone have an information on using Hyperthermia treatments for DCIS? I found one site,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2949291/, that only mentions using it for locally advanced breast cancer. I have read that there are 3 surgeons at Stanford, UCSF and Good Samaritan Hospital are recommending it.

Maybe, Beesie have you heard anything about this?

Thanks

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  • AJ123abc
    AJ123abc Member Posts: 33
    edited January 2013

    Hyperthermia does not work for DCIS. UCSG, Duke University and Bicher cancer Institute in L.A have the one 3 advanced hyperthermia machines in the entire U.S, and while Bicher Institute does claim that it can cure DCIS, the folks at UCSF strongly disagree. The reasons being:

    1) Hyperthermia works only for cancerous cells that are close to the surface of the skin. In 90% of cases DCIS cell are further away from the surface of the skin.

    2) Hyperthermia does kill cancerous cells. DCIS cells do not have the same biology of cancerous cells. They are somewhat still indentical to normal cells. Hence heat does not kill them.

    Having DCIS in most cases results in the cancer to re-occure, and next time it may not be as non-invasive as DCIS. As painful as it is, surgery (i.e. mastectomy) is the one - and only - approach as of today. Lumpectomy requires radiation thereafter, mastectomy does not.

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  • Beesie
    Beesie Member Posts: 12,240
    edited January 2013

    AJ, a couple of small points of clarification.  Smile

    A lumpectomy usually requires radiation, but not always.  Sometimes it's possible for patients with low risk DCIS and wide margins to forgo rads.  This is becoming more and more accepted within the medical community and is becoming a more common (though still unusual) choice among patients.

    And a mastectomy usually doesn't require rads, but sometimes it does.  A couple of studies have come out that show that the recurrence risk after a MX for DCIS can be significantly higher if there are close margins. So whereas it used to be (back when I was diagnosed 7 years ago) that rads was virtually never given to a patient who had a MX for DCIS, these days we are seeing rads being recommended more and more often.  There are quite a few women on this board who've had MXs for DCIS and who've had rads because of close margins.  It's not usually what happens, but it can happen. 

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