The usefulness of metabolic heat measurements inquantifying the response of a solid tumour to anticancertreatment was evaluated. The heat productioncharacteristic of malignant tissues, as measured fromhuman stomach, breast and liver cancer samples,was observed to be inconsistent, and its value couldbe higher or lower than that of its normal tissue oforigin. The various thermal activity responses of anexperimental rat hepatoma to hepatic artery ligation,cryotherapy, intra-arterial (i.a) Adriamycin (2.4 mg/kg), i.a. Norcantharidin (0.5 mg/kg) were nextstudied. Thetumour/liver(T/L) ratio of untreatedtumour-bearing rats was 0.83 but this fell to aminimum at 24 h in both the hepatic artery ligationand the cryosurgery groups. In these two groupsmarked fluctuations in the heat production ofnormal liver occurred with poor recovery of the T/L ratio even at 2--3 weeks. In the Adriamycin group,the T/L ratio dropped to a minimum at 5 days, and inthe Norcantharidin group, at 3 days. Minimaldisturbances in the thermal activity of liver tissueoccured in these two chemotherapy groups and theT/L ratio recovered by 3 weeks. Norcantharidinappeared as efficacious as Adriamycin in thetreatment of hepatoma when evaluated in terms ofthermal activity.
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