Heating of deep seated tumors is not always easy and can not be considered to be effective in all cases. Considering that interstitial hyperthermia by use of the needle left in the lesion after brachytherapy can heat only the lesion efficiently, a basic study was conducted with agar phantom.
When the phantom or pig with a Tefron-coated needle inserted is heated with Thermotoron RF8, the needle acts as an cathode which enhances convergence of RF waves to the cathode needle, thus quickening the heating up to a terget temparature.
In this study, enough temparature rise was observed. If substantial tecnical improvemnts in the temparature distribution, this needle is considered to have a favorable property as cathode needle for interstitial hyperthermia with Thermotoron RF8.
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