What has changed recently in the treatment of cancer of the peritoneum

Over the past twenty years, Professor Paul Sugarbaker HIPEC applies to the United States. The surgery seemed heavy enough to give good results in the hands of Professor Sugarbaker, but was little used outside of its own because of the lack of studies comparing patients who received the intervention and other patients who had not suffered.

All this was changed with the publication of the Nederlands Kanker Instituut in Amsterdam in September 2003 of the first and so far only comparative study in patients with colon tumors (large intestine) associated with peritoneal cancer. For the first time, this study showed that patients who had undergone a HIPEC were better than patients on standard therapy (see above). Some patients appeared to heal, or at least survive longer, which is not possible so far with chemotherapy alone. For all patients, including those that do not heal, there was a gain in terms of survival of a year on average.

Since that study, several cancer centers in Europe and the USA have implemented several variants of the technique of HIPEC. Dr. Stefaan Mulier, currently working at the Clinique du Parc Leopold in Brussels, apply the original technique of the Nederlands Kanker Instituut in Amsterdam since 2001.