Cytoreductive surgery (CRS) and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) in patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis arising from gastric cancer.
132 Background: Peritoneal carcinomatosis is a common sign of advanced tumor stage or disease recurrence in patients with gastric cancer. The prognosis of these patients is poor. There is some evidence that CRS and HIPEC may improve the oncological outcome of a highly selected part of patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis arising from gastric cancer. Nevertheless, the use of CRS and HIPEC as an additional therapeutic option is still controversial. Methods: Between 01/2005 and 09/2009 16 out of 256 patients underwent CRS and HIPEC for peritoneal carcinomatosis arising from gastric cancer at the University of Regensburg Medical Center. The mean age of patients at the time of surgery was 52 years (range 32-69). Four patients were female (25%). The mean follow-up time was 16.3 months. Results: Thirteen patients (81.25%) underwent complete macroscopic cytoreduction (CC-0/1). HIPEC was performed in all patients. The median hospital stay was 19.5 days (range 8-44) and the median stay on ICU 1 day (range 0-14), respectively. The median operating time was 342 minutes (range 49- 510). The perioperative grade 3/4 morbidity rate was 37.5%. Postoperative complications were pneumonia (2), pancreatitis (2), pneumothorax (2), intraabdominal abscess (2), renal insufficiency (1), urine bladder dysfunction (1) and wound infection (1). There was no operative mortality in our series. The 1-year survival rate was 68.7%. The mean survival of the ten patients that died during follow-up was 14.1 months (range 3.4-44.8). Conclusions: In highly selected patients with gastric cancer and peritoneal carcinomatosis CRS and HIPEC may lead to prolonged survival rates. However, the therapy should be integrated in an interdisciplinary multimodality treatment concept. Further prospective randomized trials are required to determine the role of CRS and HIPEC in the treatment of patients with gastric cancer. No significant financial relationships to disclose.