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Hyperthermia for treating cancer

Show Alternative Names
Thermal therapy
Thermal ablation
Thermotherapy
Radiofrequency ablation
RFA

Hyperthermia uses heat to damage and kill cancer cells without harming normal cells.

It may be used for:

  • A small area of cells, such as a tumor
  • Parts of the body, such as an organ or limb
  • The whole body

Information

Hyperthermia is almost always used together with radiation or chemotherapy. There are different types of hyperthermia. Some types can destroy tumors without surgery. Other types help radiation or chemotherapy work better.

Only a few cancer centers in the United States offer this treatment. It is being studied in clinical trials.

Types of Cancer

Hyperthermia is being studied to treat many types of cancer:

Local Hyperthermia

This type of hyperthermia delivers very high heat to a small area of cells or a tumor. Local hyperthermia can treat cancer without surgery.

Different forms of energy may be used, including:

  • Radio waves
  • Microwaves
  • Ultrasound waves

Heat may be delivered using:

  • An external machine to deliver heat to tumors near the surface of the body.
  • A probe to deliver heat to tumors within a body cavity, such as the throat or rectum.
  • A needle-like probe to send radio wave energy directly into the tumor to kill cancer cells. This is called radiofrequency ablation (RFA). It is the most common type of local hyperthermia. In most cases, RFA treats liver, kidney, and lung tumors that cannot be taken out with surgery or when tumors are generally smaller.

Regional Hyperthermia

This type of hyperthermia uses low heat on larger areas, such as an organ, limb, or a hollow space inside the body.

Heat may be delivered using these methods:

  • Applicators on the surface of the body focus energy on a cancer inside the body, such as cervical or bladder cancer.
  • Some of your blood is removed, heated, and then returned back to your limb or organ. This is often done with chemotherapy medicines. This method treats melanoma on the arms or legs, as well as lung or liver cancer.
  • Health care providers heat chemotherapy medicines and pump them into the area around the organs in a person's belly. This is used to treat cancers in this area.

Whole Body Hyperthermia

This treatment raises your body temperature as though you have a fever. This may help chemotherapy work better to treat cancer that has spread (metastasized). Blankets, warm water, or a heated chamber are used to warm your body. During this therapy, people sometimes get medicines to make them calm and sleepy. This is seldom performed today.

Side effects

During hyperthermia treatments, some tissues may get very hot. This can cause:

Other possible side effects include:

Whole-body hyperthermia can cause:

In rare cases, it can harm the heart or blood vessels.

Review Date: 10/21/2025

Reviewed By

Warren Brenner, MD, Oncologist, Lynn Cancer Institute, Boca Raton, FL. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.

References

American Cancer Society website. Hyperthermia to treat cancer. www.cancer.org/cancer/managing-cancer/treatment-types/hyperthermia.html. Updated April 7, 2025. Accessed December 15, 2025.

Doroshow JH. Approach to the patient with cancer. In: Goldman L, Cooney KA, eds. Goldman-Cecil Medicine. 27th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2024:chap 164.

Feng M, Matuszak MM, Ramirez E, Fraass BA. Intensity-modulated and image-guided radiotherapy. In: Tepper JE, Foote RL, Michalski JM, eds. Gunderson & Tepper's Clinical Radiation Oncology. 5th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2021:chap 21.

National Cancer Institute website. Hyperthermia to treat cancer. www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/hyperthermia. Updated May 15, 2025. Accessed December 15, 2025.

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© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.
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