Oncothermia in the treatment of patients with newly diagnosed high grade gliomas

Oncothermia is a hybrid, relatively new method of physical exposure to electromagnetic radiation in the treatment of malignant tumors, proposed for clinical use in 2001 and conventionally classified as a variant of "mild" (mild) hyperthermia. A new method of special treatment of patients with first diagnosed brain gliomas of high grade (HGG) has been developed in RSCRR, which provides for the use of adjuvant chemoradiation therapy in combination with oncothermia. Since 2017, 82 patients with confirmed HGG have been treated in the radiotherapy clinic of RSCRR. The patients were divided into 2 groups: Group 1 (n=44) - patients who received standard adjuvant chemoradiotherapy and Group 2 (n=38) - patients who received hyperthermic electrotherapy (oncothermia) twice a week on OncoTherm EHY 2000 system against the background of standard course of chemoradiotherapy with temozolomide. All patients in the study groups received the full course of treatment. The addition of oncothermia to the scheme of adjuvant chemoradiotherapy did not worsen the overall tolerability of the special treatment and, to some extent, even contributed to some regression of neurological symptoms and improvement of functional status in patients with HGG. Comparative analysis of overall survival (OS) of patients in the groups did not reveal statistically significant differences in the timing of lethal outcomes (p >0.05), but OS at all follow- up periods was higher in the oncothermia group than in the standard chemoradiation group. The small number of patients and relatively short follow-up periods did not allow us to draw reliable conclusions about the effect of including oncothermia on patient survival, but there was a trend toward increased OS and relapse-free survival.