Cytoreductive surgery and HIPEC for peritoneal metastasis. Justified hope or desperate illusion? Fifteen years of experience from a Greek Peritoneal Surface Malignancy center.

PURPOSE Peritoneal spread of neoplastic diseases is considered a fatal condition with a dismal prognosis. Few therapeutic options were offered to these patients and surgery had only palliative character. However, advances in surgical techniques and new drugs development, have changed the management of this terminal stage disease. Cytoreductive surgery (CRS) followed by hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC), has been proposed as a promising alternative to palliative surgery and systemic chemotherapy, since 1980s. Many changes through all these years have refined the technique and standardized indications and limits. METHODS A retrospective study was performed in our medical records, of all patients treated with CRS and HIPEC since 2006. Survival, complications and prognostic factors were studied in a total of 632 patients. RESULTS Female patients were 419 and males were 213. Mean age was 52.6 years. Peritoneal metastases secondary to colorectal cancer were the most frequent treated disease (87 patients), whereas hepatobilliary-pancreatic neoplastic diseases and sarcomas were the less frequent causes of peritoneal carcinomatosis. Patients with peritoneal metastases from ovarian cancer, treated with systemic chemotherapy and then received interval cytoreductive surgery with HIPEC, were the largest group that are still alive (43%), while only 35% of patients with hepatobilliary-pancreatic cancer and peritoneal disease are alive at present. Gender, age, peritoneal cancer index (PCI), completeness of cytoreduction score (CCs), and number of complications were important prognostic factors of overall survival. CONCLUSIONS Peritoneal carcinomatosis is still considered a final stage disease with a poor prognosis. The confinement of the neoplastic disease in the peritoneal cavity has led to the development of local therapies with promising results. CRS and HIPEC have evolved significantly over the past several years and are at the present the most valuable treatment in highly selected patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis.