EXPERIMENTS ON THERMODIFFERENTIAL CHEMOTHERAPY WITH THORACOTOMY FOR BLOOD-BORNE PULMONARY METASTASIS IN RATS

Abstract

A newly-devised multidisciplinary therapy, combining chemotherapy with surgical thoracotomy, was experimented on blood-borne metastases of syngeneic sarcoma of WKA rat lungs yielding satisfactory results.
The therapy consists of two different but interrelated methods; the preliminary one applied to one-side of the lung and the principal one applied to both lungs. In the former method (Method I), regional hyperthermic chemothorax (37°) combined with temporary occlusion (20∼30min) of the hemipulmonary blood circulation under general hypothermia was applied to one of the two lungs, both bearing blood-borne tumor metastases, and was quite effective on the treated unilateral lung, though not effective on the contralateral lung under systemic administration of carboquone.
In the principal method (Method II) which was applied to a both lungs, occlusion of the blood circulation was not made, so that the regional hyperthermic chemothorax (40°) treatment could be safely performed for 30∼60min under general hypothermia.
When Method II was applied to the bilateral lungs of a rat using carboquone as the anticancer agent, metastases in both lungs were successfully cured at a considerably high rate. There were two rats which survived over 6 months after receiving the therapy despite the fact that all untreated and drug-injection alone control rats died of severe pulmonary metastases within 4 weeks.