The use of heated chemotherapy combined with surgery is more effective than conventional approaches in treating cancers that have spread to the abdomen. This is the conclusion of four studies carried out by investigators from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (Winston-Salem, North Carolina). The results were presented at the Society of Oncology Surgeons national meeting in early March.

Investigators looked at the use of surgery with intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemotherapy (IPHC) for the treatment of cancers that had disseminated from the bowel, ovaries or appendix to the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity). Mesotheliomas originating in the abdomen were also studied. The use of heated drugs “...potentiates the effect of chemotherapy and decreases tumor resistance to chemotherapy”, stated Perry Shen, who led one of the studies (Reuters Health, 7 March 2005).

In one study, six patients with peritoneal carcinomas secondary to small-bowel cancer, in addition to undergoing surgery to debulk the tumour, were treated with IPHC. Median survival of these patients was 45.1 months, compared with 3.1 months for conventionally treated patients. Although further studies are needed, these results indicate that surgery plus IPHC “...seems to be an effective and attractive option in a very difficult situation”, remarked Perry Shen (www.newswise.com, 9 March 2005).

Treatments were not comprehensively successful — high-grade peritoneal tumours that had spread from the appendix showed no beneficial effect with IPHC. On balance though, as John Toy, of Cancer Research UK, comments, the results “...certainly look encouraging” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/, 8 March 2005).