What Does "HIPEC" Treatment Entail?
- Hyperthermic (heated) intraperitoneal chemotherapy involved directly administering heated chemo drugs into a woman’s abdomen immediately following ovarian cancer surgery
- The treatment can allow women to receive higher doses of chemotherapy, and it can be helpful to target any cancer cells that are left over after surgery
- The treatment is complicated — and can cause more severe side effects — so it may not be the best option for every woman with ovarian cancer
So what does HIPEC involve?
Read More After a woman with ovarian cancer has undergone a surgery to remove all visible cancer in her abdomen — called a “debulking” surgery — HIPEC can be administered during the same procedure. During a HIPEC infusion, tubes of heated chemotherapy drugs are administered directly into the abdomen and circulated for about 90 minutes, delivering a strong, direct dose of chemo in the hopes of killing any remaining cancer cells that were not able to be removed during the surgery itself. The intense treatment can be especially helpful for targeting cancer cells in the lymph nodes. While the higher dose of chemo can improve progression-free survival for many women with ovarian cancer (“progression-free survival” meaning the amount of time that a woman can live without her cancer getting any worse), it is also important to know that the treatment can cause more severe side effects than other forms of chemo. According to Dr. Antonio Santillan-Gomez, a gynecologic oncologist with Texas Oncology in San Antonio, the most common side effects that women experience following HIPEC chemo are nausea and vomiting. Following HIPEC, it may also take women slightly longer to recover their full bowel function, but according to Dr. Santillan-Gomez, many of these side effects can be managed through controlled medications.
Of course, due to the more severe side effects as well as the fact that the treatment is very complicated to administer, HIPEC may not be the right option for every woman with ovarian cancer. Deciding who is most likely to benefit from the treatment, accordingly, should be an individualized decision.
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