Efficacy of Hyperthermia treatment in combination with radio- or chemotherapy in Breast-, Bladder-, Cervix carcinoma and Soft tissue sarcoma patients

Project team: Claudia Wild, Andreas Kirisits
Duration: June 2012 – December 2012
Publication: HTA - Projectreport Nr. 36/Update 2012: https://eprints.aihta.at/986/

- Editorial 2012
Concerning the final report "Hyperthermia: A systematic review" of Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Health Technology Assessment, Vienna, March 2010
Sauer, et al.
Strahlentherapie und Onkologie, 2012,  Volume 188(3) 209-215.

- Antwort auf Editorial 2012
The final publication is available at link.springer.com
Link:  http://link.springer.com/search?query=10.1007%2Fs00066-012-0265-2
Because of the low quality evidence, hyperthermia cannot be included in the benefit catalogue for oncologic indications. Strong commercial interests are presumed behind the editorial of R. Sauer et al.
C. Wild et al.
Strahlentherapie und Onkologie, 2013, Volume 189(1):81-6.

- Erratum
Erratum to: Should hyperthermia be included in the benefit catalogue for oncologic indications? Commercial interests are presumed behind the editorial of R. Sauer et al.
Strahlentherapie und Onkologie, 2013, Volume 189 (3) 271-272.

- Hyperthermie Brief 2014

- Antwort auf Hyperthermie Brief 2014

- Hyperthermie Brief 2 2014

The objective of this review was to synthesize the evidence on efficacy of hyperthermia in combination with radio- or chemotherapy in breast-, bladder-, cervix carcinoma and soft tissue sarcoma patients. The report is based on 2 previous systematic reviews a systematic literature search in 4 databases with identical search terms was carried out in order to find randomized clinical trials. 2 RCTs for breast cancer, 2 RCTs for bladder cancer, 3 RCTs for cervix carcinoma, 1 RCT for bladder and cervix and 1 RCT for soft tissue sarcoma were found. Overall, of the 1265 patients 656 were allocated to receive treatment with hyperthermia in combination with radio- or chemotherapy. Where CR or PR was assessed (in 6 from 9 trials) hyperthermia showed statistical significant outcomes. Some of the trials assessed DFS (3/9) or PFS (2/9): all of them show superiority of the hyperthermia arm. Of the 9 publications providing OS data only 1 shows a statistical significant improvement in overall survival, thus proposing that the surrogate endpoints do not translate into a survival benefit and hyperthermia leads to temporal effects only. QoL was not assessed in any of the trials. The reporting of safety data was consistent across the studies showing a trend towards an inferior safety profile within the hyperthermia arms.