Electrotherapy

Known as electrochemical tumor therapy, Galvanotherapie and electro-cancer treatment (ECT), was developed in Europe by the Swedish professor Björn Nordenström and the Austrian doctor Rudolf Pekar. The therapy employs galvanic electrical stimulation to treat tumors and skin cancers. ECT is used most often as an adjunct with other therapies. Using local anesthesia, the physician inserts a positively-charged platinum, gold or silver needle into the tumor and places negatively-charged needles around the tumor. Voltages of 6 to 15 volts are used, dependent upon tumor size. To enhance the cancer-cell-killing power of ECT, sometimes small amounts of chemotherapy agents are applied to the skin and driven into the tumor by a kind of sweating effect of the electric current (“iontophoresis”). ECT works by influencing the acid/alkaline (pH) levels within the tumor and causing electrolysis of its tissue, which is more susceptible to direct current than normal tissue. The pH change depolarizes cancer cell membranes and causes tumors to be gently destroyed. The ECT process also appears to generate heat shock proteins around the cancer cells, inducing cell-specific immunity. This process triggers Natural Killer cells.