[Immunotherapy with hyperthermia for advanced or recurrent breast cancer patients in whom standard therapy showed no effect or was refused].

We treated 168 advanced or recurrent breast cancer patients with hyperthermia or immunotherapy (2005/7-2011/12). In these cases, standard therapy showed no effect or was refused. Clinical benefit( complete response: CR, partial response, and long stable disease) was observed in 26 cases; CR occurred in 4 cases. The effective rate of immunotherapy increased from 9.1% to 23.9% using hyperthermia. Both hyperthermia and immunotherapy needed to be used together to be effective in 20 cases with distant metastases to solid organs.