We treated 172 patients with advanced or recurrent
breast cancer using
hyperthermia or
immunotherapy between July 2005 and September 2012. In these patients, standard
therapy showed no results, or it was refused. Clinical benefit( complete response [CR], partial response[PR], and long stable disease [SD] for more than 6 months) was observed in 30 patients( 17.4%), including CR in 5 patients. The effective rate of
immunotherapy increased from 7.7% to 26.0% using
hyperthermia. The effective rate of
hyperthermia was only 5.1%. The standard
therapy had not been altered in 23 of the 30 patients in whom clinical benefit was observed. Thus,
immunotherapy or
hyperthermia had benefited these 23 patients. Of the 23 effectively treated patients, skin or regional
lymph node metastases disappeared in 3 patients treated with
hyperthermia alone, and lung
metastases disappeared and carcinomatous
pleuritis improved in 1 patient treated with
immunotherapy alone. In the remaining 19 effectively treated patients, multiple
metastases were observed in important solid organs such as the liver, lung, bone, and brain. Combined
hyperthermia and
immunotherapy was used to treat these 19 patients to good effect.