Diseased and damaged human tissues

Attention has only recently focussed on the potential of calorimetry for studying the differences in metabolic activity caused by the diseased state and by such procedures as transplantation, in this respect, attention has already been drawn to an investigation into Duchenne muscular dystrophy (see Section 4.1.1). A disease that affects a far larger proportion of the population, however, is cancer. One of the most serious problems in treating neoplasia lies in the initial detection of it. Some of the methods rely to an extent on subjective criteria and it would be a great advantage if there were a more objective approach. 

After successful detection, the next stage is to secure a cure. One suggestion has been to heat tumour tissue by microwaves to 60 C and kill the cells by coagulation of their proteins - thermotherapy [85]. For this to have some chance 

Heat flux, Jo in, for mammalian cells with ranges or standard deviations for some cell types. The tabulation is based on data in References [4,6,7,8] that give the original sources (Reproduced from Reference [44] with permission). 

On a different topic, there is increasing pressure to improve the success rate of organ transplantation. As an example of the contribution that calorimetric measurements can make to this field, attention is drawn to a study on ischaemic liver. Tissue injury to liver due to hypoxia or ischaemia during surgery and transplantation is a serious problem and it is difficult to predict recovery from it. It has been suggested [88] that calorimetry, as an indicator of metabolic activity, might have role in prediction. One of the traditional indices of the ischaemic 

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