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2025.04.29

Good Doctor. Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy (HIPEC): Alternative to Traditional HIPEC - Three and Four Cycles of HIPEC


Intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemotherapy (IPHC) has remained largely unchanged in the past 30 years. It is used to prevent peritoneal metastasis in patients with a high risk of disease progression in gastric or colorectal cancer, and more commonly to treat patients with peritoneal metastasis from ovarian, gastric, colorectal, and appendiceal cancers. After undergoing cytoreductive surgery, IPHC is used to help maintain a disease-free state in the peritoneal and pelvic cavities. From a theoretical perspective and analysis of IPHC failures, this treatment method has several shortcomings. First, perhaps the most serious criticism of IPHC is its insufficient "dwell time" in the peritoneal and pelvic cavities. The chemotherapy solution is maintained at 41-43 degrees Celsius using a hyperthermia pump for only 90 minutes. This limited drug exposure time is even more problematic for residual micrometastases, as high intraperitoneal concentrations of most chemotherapeutic drugs are only maintained for 30-60 minutes. High-molecular-weight drugs like paclitaxel diffuse more slowly from the peritoneal cavity. Low-molecular-weight drugs like cisplatin no longer maintain high concentrations in the peritoneal cavity after only 20 minutes. My conclusion is that increasing the dwell time of chemotherapeutic drugs in the peritoneal cavity is the primary condition for achieving greater efficacy of IPHC.

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