A 57-year-old man on dialysis presented with fever due to Pseudomonas septicemia. Workup revealed very high triglycerides and serum ferritin levels. A bone marrow examination showed hemophagocytosis. A diagnosis of hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) was made and steroids were started. He was put on automated peritoneal dialysis. Patients' condition continued to deteriorate and he succumbed to his illness. This case illustrates the development of HLH secondary to infections which are increasingly being recognized in the literature. Often this diagnosis is missed as it becomes difficult to differentiate between sepsis and HLH. The presence of high ferritin, hypertriglyceridemia, and hemophagocytosis in the bone marrow confirms the diagnosis.
Loco-regional hyperthermia at 40–44 °C is a multifaceted therapeutic modality with the distinct triple advantage of being a potent radiosensitizer, a chemosensitizer and an immunomodulator. Risk difference estimates from pairwise meta-analysis have shown that the local tumour control could be improved by 22.3% (p < 0.001), 22.1% (p < 0.001) and 25.5% (p < 0.001) in recurrent breast cancers, locally advanced cervix cancer (LACC) and locally advanced head and neck cancers, respectively by adding hyperthermia to radiotherapy over radiotherapy alone. Furthermore, thermochemoradiotherapy in LACC have shown to reduce the local failure rates by 10.1% (p = 0.03) and decrease deaths by 5.6% (95% CI: 0.6–11.8%) over chemoradiotherapy alone. As around one-third of the cancer cases in low-middle-income group countries belong to breast, cervix and head and neck regions, hyperthermia could be a potential game-changer and expected to augment the clinical outcomes of these patients in conjunction with radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy. Further, hyperthermia could also be a cost-effective therapeutic modality as the capital costs for setting up a hyperthermia facility is relatively low. Thus, the positive outcomes evident from various phase III randomized trials and meta-analysis with thermoradiotherapy or thermochemoradiotherapy justifies the integration of hyperthermia in the therapeutic armamentarium of clinical management of cancer, especially in low-middle-income group countries.
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