ABSTRACT
CONTENTS 12.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 414 12.2 RF Heating Mechanisms................................................................................................ 414 12.3 Temperature Rise Due to RF Heating ......................................................................... 415 12.4 Hyperthermia for Cancer Treatment........................................................................... 417 12.5 Methods of RF Hyperthermia....................................................................................... 417 12.6 Hyperthermia Clinical Phase III Trials ....................................................................... 419
12.6.1 Breast Cancer ..................................................................................................... 419 12.6.2 Other Superficial Malignancies ...................................................................... 419 12.6.3 Head and Neck Cancer.................................................................................... 419 12.6.4 Esophagus .......................................................................................................... 420 12.6.5 Malignant Melanoma ....................................................................................... 420 12.6.6 Glioblastoma Multiforme ................................................................................ 420 12.6.7 Carcinoma of the Cervix.................................................................................. 420 12.6.8 Summary of Clinical Trials ............................................................................. 420
12.7 RF Ablation ...................................................................................................................... 421 12.7.1 RFA Methods..................................................................................................... 421 12.7.2 RFA Clinical Applications............................................................................... 422
12.7.2.1 Liver Tumors .................................................................................... 422 12.7.2.2 Kidney................................................................................................ 422 12.7.2.3 Bone.................................................................................................... 423 12.7.2.4 Pain..................................................................................................... 423 12.7.2.5 Lung ................................................................................................... 423 12.7.2.6 Breast.................................................................................................. 423 12.7.2.7 Other Tumors ................................................................................... 423 12.7.2.8 Miscellaneous Applications of RFA ............................................. 423 12.7.2.9 Summary of RFA Clinical Studies ................................................ 424
12.8 Other Applications ......................................................................................................... 424 12.8.1 Cosmetics ........................................................................................................... 424
12.9 Concluding Remarks...................................................................................................... 424 Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... 425 References ................................................................................................................................... 425
The Bioelectromagnetics Society recognizes distinguished scientists in the field of bioelectromagnetics with its highest award, the d’Arsonval Award. This award honors a French scientist Jacques-Arse`ne d’Arsonval who pioneered research on the beneficial effects of radio frequency (RF) energy in the late-19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Since the 1940s, diathermy (‘‘through heat’’) has been used in rehabilitation medicine to relieve pain from sprains and strains. RF and ultrasound energy have been used for achieving deep-tissue heating to increase blood flow and collagen tissue extensibility, decrease joint stiffness, and muscle spasm [1]. In the mid-1970s, scientists and engineers started applying hyperthermia (40-458C heating) in combination with ionizing radiation or chemotherapy to treat localized or metastasized cancer [2,3]. In the 1980s, RF ablation (50-1008C heating) was first used for cardiac arrhythmia and recently in the last ten years, for inducing local tumor necrosis [4,5]. Diathermy, hyperthermia, and ablation all use the same RF energy-heating characteristics to achieve different temperatures to treat various clinical conditions and diseases. Other applications using the propagating characteristics of the RF energy for medical purposes, such as RF telemetry to couple sound signals to implanted hearing devices (cochlear implant or middle-ear hearing device), are not discussed here [6,7]. In this chapter, RF heating mechanisms are first explained, followed by a discussion of
the relationship between RF heating and temperature rise. Then, RF hyperthermia and ablation are emphasized and some other heating applications are briefly discussed. Clinical applications published since 1995 are selected as examples, but animal and laboratory studies as well as engineering developments are not included because of page limitation. Also, the use of RF energy frequency current less than 100 kHz that can be used for bone and wound healing, nerve regeneration, and other nonheating applications (wave propagation) are not in the scope of this chapter.
