Heated chemotherapy is a new method of treating cancer, which helps to increase the effectiveness of cancer drugs. This method is called hyperthermic intra-peritoneal chemotherapy  that works after a heated chemotherapy drug is flushed into the surrounding tissues of the tumor. Because of the heat, the drugs works twice its potential as it weakens the tumor’s ability to repair by its own after being removed.

Heated chemotherapy is a new technique to fight cancer, which has proved quite helpful. Although the traditional methods of chemotherapy have also worked wonders in fighting the disease, these new methods have made the lives of cancer patients much easier and have bought a major difference in their routine.

Most chemotherapy drugs do not prove very helpful especially if the cancer is discovered at a later stage wherein the disease has spread to a great extent. The drugs used for chemotherapy also give a lot of side effects and have even proved fatal in some cases.

It is for this reason that doctors still follow a lot of clinical trials to find new drug combination and dosage to cure the different types of cancers. The health of the patients also matters while prescribing the drugs or different chemotherapy options. This makes it difficult to follow a universal pattern of type of drugs for a particular type of cancer and the stage of the disease.

Heated chemotherapy has cured a number of cancer patients suffering from abdominal cancers even at an advanced stage especially when the cancer spreads to the abdomen and the nearby organs like the appendix. Standard chemotherapy treatments does very little to fight the cancers at an advanced stage but with heated chemotherapy, the effectiveness and the survival rates of the patients has increased even at a stage when the tumor grows, spreads and enlarges making matters worse.

Heated chemotherapy is often combined with surgery, because the heated medications are inserted into the patient’s body only once the tumor is removed after surgery. The treatment is usually given in two stages with the tumor being removed with the help of surgery and then while the patient is still in the operation theatre a heated saline solution combined with chemotherapy drugs is directly inserted into the cavity of the abdomen.

Scientists have found that the tumor tissues are comparatively more sensitive to heat than the normal tissues in our body. With the increase in temperature of the drug, the tumor has little resistance for chemotherapy.

The cancers that can be cured with heated chemotherapy include tumors arising in the abdominal cavity such as peritoneal cancer. This cancer affects the abdominal wall lining which later spreads to multiple organs. Apart from this, ovarian cancer in its advanced stages can also be cured by this kind of chemotherapy. Patients who do not show much improvement with the traditional chemotherapy methods are also tested for heated chemotherapy. It is always advised to the patients to ask about chemotherapy treatment, clear their doubts and then start the treatment.

There have been four studies so far which were conducted on animals. As per the studies, this new procedure of chemotherapy could kill all the cancer cells that have spread to the different parts of the body apart from the cells present near the tumor. And since the drug is administered immediately after the surgery, most of the drugs remain near the tumor. This would further kill the cancer cells avoiding its spread. The unpleasant side effects coming from chemotherapy can also be reduced with this method.

Heated chemotherapy for its immediate results and its ability to stop the spread of cancer is gaining a lot of popularity. Chemotherapy is still in its evolution stage because the drug cannot be used in a standard form among cancer patients. Apart from heated chemotherapy, one will still find new methods to cure the disease and hopefully the drug would give no side effects at all in the future. But as said before, more research and more work in this path is still going on to find the effectiveness of heated chemotherapy on the patients.