Good Doctor — Thermal Perfusion | A New Beginning for the New Year | The Thermal Perfusion Technology at the Tumor Center of Shanghai 411 Hospital Safeguards Patients

Good Doctor — Thermal Perfusion | A New Beginning for the New Year | The Thermal Perfusion Technology at the Tumor Center of Shanghai 411 Hospital Safeguards Patients

At the start of the new year, the Tumor Center of Shanghai 411 Hospital has set its sights on enhancing both treatment outcomes and patient experience. Staying at the forefront of medical innovation, the center is leveraging its mature regional thermal circulation perfusion therapy technology to carry out clinical diagnosis and treatment. This technology boasts significant advantages—high specificity and precise efficacy—and will be further promoted and applied in the coming year, offering cancer patients even better treatment options and opportunities for recovery. It will help the hospital meet ongoing diagnostic and therapeutic challenges, thereby safeguarding people’s health and well-being.

What is “Regional Thermal Circulatory Perfusion Therapy”?

This is a localized, precision treatment technique for malignant tumors of the chest and abdominal cavities. Using a circulating perfusion approach, heated chemotherapy drugs are delivered directly and continuously to the tumor area, enabling synergistic effects between hyperthermia and chemotherapy.
Simply put, it’s like giving the patient’s body cavities—such as the abdominal or thoracic cavity—a precise, temperature-controlled “hot bath.” Leveraging the temperature sensitivity difference between cancer cells and normal tissues, the drug-infused solution is heated to around 43°C and continuously circulated. Under the thermal effect, the cancer cells are “scalded” to death, while the locally high concentration of the drug also exerts its therapeutic effect directly. The synergistic interaction between these two factors amplifies the treatment efficacy, achieving a “1+1>2” outcome.

Five Mechanisms of Technology

1. The thermal effect directly damages tumor cells: Normal human cells can regain their normal functions after a brief exposure to high temperatures, but tumor tissues have poor heat dissipation capabilities. In a warm environment ranging from 42°C to 43°C, cancer cells experience protein denaturation and impaired DNA replication, ultimately leading to apoptosis.

2. Synergistic Enhancement of Hyperthermia and Chemotherapy: A warm environment can increase the permeability of tumor cell membranes, facilitating smoother entry of chemotherapeutic drugs into cells, significantly boosting drug concentrations, and inhibiting the cancer cells’ ability to detoxify the drugs, thereby markedly enhancing the therapeutic efficacy.

3. Mechanical flushing to remove lesions: A large-volume irrigation fluid is continuously circulated, and mechanical flushing is applied to the body cavity to remove free cancer cells and tiny metastatic foci, thereby reducing the tumor cell burden.

4. Improving Local Blood Supply and Drug Distribution: The thermal effect can cause local blood vessels to dilate, enhancing blood perfusion in tumor tissues. This not only improves the hypoxic microenvironment but also facilitates drug accumulation in the lesion.

5. Activation of anti-tumor immune responses: The thermal effect can induce immune signals such as heat shock proteins, enhancing the body’s immune surveillance and attack capabilities against tumors and thereby generating a systemic anti-tumor effect.

For which patients is it suitable?

Suitable for tumors that are prone to intracavitary implantation and metastasis.

Abdominal tumor: For cancers such as gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, ovarian cancer, and pancreatic cancer, the treatment can directly target tumor cells within the abdominal cavity, thereby reducing the risk of recurrence.

Thoracic tumor: Malignant pleural effusions caused by lung cancer, esophageal cancer, and other conditions can effectively control the effusion and eliminate free cancer cells in the pleural cavity.

Urogenital tumors: For bladder cancer, intravesical instillation can directly target tumor cells on the surface of the bladder mucosa, yielding significant therapeutic effects with minimal side effects.

What are the advantages of the treatment?

As an important component of comprehensive cancer treatment, this technology offers the following advantages:

1. Precise local treatment: The medication acts directly on the lesion area, resulting in high local drug concentrations and relatively fewer systemic side effects.

2. Reducing the risk of recurrence and metastasis: It is effective even against tumors that are insensitive to conventional chemotherapy, helping to decrease peritoneal implantation and metastasis.

3. Synergistic Enhancement of Thermotherapy and Chemotherapy: Combining thermotherapy with chemotherapy promotes each other, thereby enhancing the overall therapeutic efficacy.

4. Improve the local microenvironment: By means of mechanical flushing and thermal effects, reduce fluid accumulation and remove free cancer cells.

During hyperthermic perfusion therapy, tumor cells, inflammatory exudates, and blood components within the abdominal cavity are gradually removed, reducing the pathological components of ascitic fluid and progressively bringing it closer to the characteristics of normal peritoneal fluid.

What is the treatment process like?

Under ultrasound or endoscopic guidance, a perfusion catheter is placed and connected to an extracorporeal circulation device. A drug-containing perfusate, heated to the therapeutic temperature, is continuously circulated and infused into the body cavity. Each treatment lasts approximately 60 to 90 minutes; the specific treatment duration and choice of medication will be tailored individually by the physician based on the patient’s condition. During the treatment, the medical team will provide close, continuous monitoring throughout the entire procedure to ensure both safety and comfort.

The new year ushers in a new chapter. The regional thermal circulation perfusion therapy technique has now reached maturity at the Cancer Center, highlighting the center’s advanced capabilities in comprehensive cancer treatment. Leveraging this mature technology as our key strength, our department will continue to provide patients with expert medical care and heartfelt service, guiding them firmly on their path to recovery. As we step into the new year together, may we join forces to overcome challenges, embrace the dawn of health, and write a brand-new chapter of vibrant well-being and longevity.