Abrazo Central Campus, 2000 W. Bethany Home Road, now offers Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy (HIPEC) as a treatment option for appropriate patients with advanced abdominal and ovarian cancers.
Developed as an effective treatment for cancers that have spread to the abdominal lining, the HIPEC procedure involves surgically removing all visible tumors and then bathing the abdomen with high dose, heated chemotherapy.
Patients with advanced abdominal cancers have received the HIPEC procedure at Abrazo Central Campus since April 2018, and the hospital’s multidisciplinary surgical team treated their first HIPEC ovarian cancer patient in July.
During the HIPEC treatment, a heated sterile solution containing a chemotherapeutic agent is continuously circulated throughout the abdominal cavity, for 90 minutes. The entire procedure including surgery can last several hours.
“This is an opportunity to offer hope to patients with advanced-stage malignancies that have disease limited to the abdominal cavity. The idea is to attempt to or remove or kill any remaining cancer cells,” said Ronald Chamberlain, MD, MPA, FACS, lead surgical oncologist on the Abrazo Central Campus medical staff.
Cytoreductive surgery, or removal of all visible tumors throughout the abdominal cavity (peritoneum), combined with HIPEC is a comprehensive surgical treatment for carefully selected patients with malignancies arising from or confined to the peritoneal cavity, explained Dr. Chamberlain.
HIPEC also can be an option for treating cancer that has spread to the lining surfaces of the abdominal cavity from primary colorectal cancer, gastric cancer, appendiceal cancer or from mesothelioma.
