Reliability of temperature and SAR measurements at oesophageal tumour locations

Introduction: For treatment of oesophageal cancer, neo-adjuvant locoregional hyperthermia (HT) has been applied in combination with chemotherapy (ChT) ± radiotherapy (RT) at the institute. Until now, 26 patients were treated within a completed phase I study combining HT with ChT and 29 patients within an ongoing phase II study combining HT with ChT + RT.Methods: HT was given with the 70 MHz AMC-4 waveguide system. Initially, oesophageal temperatures were measured using multi-sensor thermocouple probes (TCs) inside a nasogastric tube (NT), but the question arose whether these measurements were reliable enough to quantify the achieved tumour temperatures accurately. Presently, TCs are mounted on the outside of an inflatable balloon catheter (BC) for better intra-luminal fixation and better contact with the tumour. During 14 treatment sessions in four patients TCs inside a NT and mounted on a BC were used simultaneously. Data from these 14 treatment sessions were used to compare temperature and Specific Abso...