Analysis of the clinical effectiveness of 144 cases of soft tissue and superficial malignant tumours treated with electrochemical therapy.

Electrochemical therapy (ECT) was used for the treatment of 144 cases of soft tissue and superficial malignant tumours. All tumours were cytologically verified and included 39 soft-tissue sarcomas, ten head-neck cancers, 21 malignant melanomas, seven skin cancers, three cervical cancers, two breast cancers, 27 recurrent cancers and 35 metastatic cancers. The TNM stage of primary cancers were: T1: n = 28, T2: n = 36, T3: n = 12, and T4: n = 6. Among these, 23 cases were lymph nodes metastases and 12 systemic metastases. There were 43 cases of localised recurrent cancer and 19 cases of generalised metastatic disease. ECT was used to treat 128 cases once, nine cases twice, four cases three times and three four times. All patients received systemic chemotherapy for one to two cycles, and three of them were also treated by radiotherapy. The short-term effectiveness rate was 86.87% (125/144) with 81 complete response (CR) (tumour disappeared completely), accounting for 58.3% of all cases, 41 partial response (PR) (tumour regressed to more than half of its original size) accounting for 28.5%. Fourteen (9.7%) no change (NC); tumour regressed to less than half of its original size) and five (4.5%) progressive disease (PD); tumour did not regress or even increased in size). The short-term effectiveness rate in relation to tumour size was 94.5% (120/127) for tumour diameters of < 7 cm and 29.4% (5/17) for tumour diameters > 7 cm (p < 0.001). The long-term effectiveness, that is the survival rates for 1, 2, 3 and 4 years, was 83.3% (120/144), 74.1% (89/120), 84.3% (75/89) and 73.3% (55/75), respectively.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)