title: Local hyperthermia, hyperfractionated radiation, and cisplatin in preirradiated recurrent lymph node metastases of recurrent head and neck cancer.
abstract: Large tumor size is a negative prognostic variable for attaining complete regression (CR) with local hyperthermia (HT) and radiotherapy (RT). Such poor prognosis lesions (i.e., >7 cm(2) or >14 cm(3)) have an expected CR rate of similar to 30+/-8%. To improve on this result we added cisplatin to HT and RT with standard fractionation (std Fx) in an earlier study, and observed a 19% CR rate in head and neck (H&N) patients. We now report the results of a second generation trial combining HT, cisplatin (40 mg/m(2)) and hyperfractionated RT in a series of 13 pretreated poor prognosis H&N patients. Therapy encompassed 44 triple modality sessions and was well tolerated: toxicity included one episode of grade-3 skin reaction and one grade 1 leukopenia. Although the overall remission rate was 92%, the CR rate was only 8%; this resulted in early closure of this trial concluding that hyperfractionated RT had no (over std Fx RT) benefit in this combined modality approach.
authors.affiliation: UNIV WISCONSIN,CTR COMPREHENS CANC,MADISON,WI 53792. UNIV LUBECK,D-23538 LUBECK,GERMANY.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Feyerabend
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Steeves
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Jager
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wiedemann
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sommer
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Richter
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Katschinski
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Robins