Clinical Efficacy of Combination Intravenous and Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy in the Treatment of Gastric Cancer with Peritoneal Carcinomatosis

OBJECTIVE: To identify the clinical and adverse effects of intravenous chemotherapy combined with intraperitoneal chemotherapy in the treatment of gastric cancer with abdominal peritoneal carcinomatosis. METHODS: Retrospective analysis was performed on 49 gastric cancer patients with abdominal peritoneal carcinomatosis. Patients were divided into two groups: patients subjected to intravenous chemotherapy (n = 27) were defined as the Control group and patients subjected to combined intravenous and intraperitoneal chemotherapy (n = 22) were defined as the Combination Therapy group. Then the objective efficacy, survival, and adverse effects of two groups were evaluated. RESULTS: The clinical characteristics of two groups were equally distributed. Compared with the Control group, the Objective Response Rate (ORR) and Disease Control Rate (DCR) of the Combination Therapy group were significantly higher (all P<0.05). The Median Survival Time (MST) of the Control group was (6.57 ± 0.75) months, which was significantly shorter than in the Combination Therapy group (15.03 ± 2.31) months (P < 0.05). In addition, the 12-, 18-, 24-, 30-, 36-, and 60-month survival rates of the Control group were all significantly lower than those of the Combination Therapy group. Furthermore, the incidence of adverse reactions in the two groups was not statistically significant; neither of the treatments resulted in severe complications. CONCLUSION: Compared with intravenous chemotherapy alone, the combined intravenous and intraperitoneal chemotherapy was more effective in improving quality of life and extending survival time in patients with abdominal peritoneal carcinomatosis from gastric cancer. In addition, the combination treatment is tolerable and therefore worth further clinical study.