Aim: Peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC) is one of the routes of spread of abdominal neoplasms and is generally considered a lethal disease, with a poor prognosis by conventional chemotherapeutic treatments. While systemic chemotherapy has little impact on the treatment of peritoneal disease, some centers have reported encouraging results on overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) with surgical cytoreduction associated with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC). The purpose of this article is to evaluate the survival benefit and the morbidity in patients affected by colorectal PC treated at our institution by cytoreductive surgery associated with HIPEC.
Methods: In our institution, from October 1995 to June 2012, about 550 operations for PC were performed; in 300 cases cytoreduction plus HIPEC was carried out. Out of 90 operations for colonic cancer: 50 cytoreduction plus HIPEC, 12 cytoreduction and EPIC (early postoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy) and 28 debulking or explorative laparoscopies/laparotomies were performed. For the present study, 50 patients who had undergone cytoreduction and HIPEC for PC of colorectal cancer origin (CRC) were considered.
Results: The morbidity and mortality rates were 34% (17/50) and 2% (1/50), respectively. The patients were divided in two groups according to PCI (peritoneal cancer index, range 0-39) and CC score (completeness of cytoreduction): in Group A (23 patients, PCI>16, CC-2) the median survival time was 15 months compared to 48.1 months for Group B (27 patients, PCI≤16, CC-0/1). The poor survival of Group A seemed to be related to higher PCI and CC score.
Conclusion: Patient selection based on a maximum PCI of 16 associated with a complete cytoreduction (CC-0) produced encouraging results.