The therapy was meant only to treat her skin -- and the cancer ultimately spread to Driscoll's bones -- but it was ''psychologically important" to her to see the tumors in her skin disappear, she said.
Heating tumors has not yet been proved to save lives, but several new studies suggest that so-called hyperthermia can boost the tumor-killing power of chemotherapy and radiation. Hyperthermia, an old treatment idea that is enjoying a resurgence, uses microwaves to raise the temperature of a tumor to 104 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit.
At least eight studies in recent years have shown that adding hyperthermia to chemotherapy or radiation increases the effectiveness of those treatments against melanoma, tumors in the esophagus, cervix, head, neck, and brain, and breast cancers that have spread to the chest wall, said Dr. Mark Dewhirst, director of the hyperthermia program at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.
Scientists who have seen the effects of hyperthermia are impressed. ''I'm amazed at some of the tumors that just melt away with the combination of radiation and heat," said Dr. David Wazer, chief radiation oncologist at Tufts-New England Medical Center.
Hyperthermia could turn out to be among the most powerful anticancer weapons yet. Consider this idea, now being studied at Duke: Researchers have created a tiny bubble, or liposome, with water on the inside and a ring of fat on the outside. Mixed in with the water is a chemotherapy drug, doxorubicin. The liposome is designed to be stable at body temperature but to burst when heated. By delivering the liposome into the tumor and using hyperthermia to explode it, Dewhirst has shown in mice that doctors can deliver 30 times more chemotherapy than would otherwise be possible.
Scientists think hyperthermia probably fights cancer in several ways.
''When you combine heat and radiation, the cell-killing of cancer cells is better," said Dr. Jay Harris, chairman of radiation oncology at both Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
