Review of management and treatment of peritoneal metastases from gastric cancer origin

Abstract

Gastric cancer (GC) is the third cause of cancer-related deaths in the world, with less than 25% survivors at 5 years. These results are largely related to the high incidence of peritoneal metastases (PM) in these patients. Nowadays, the standard treatment for GC with PM is palliative systemic chemotherapy (SCT) with a survival of 6 months. From the 2000s, the combination of cytoreductive surgery (CRS) with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) has been gaining popularity for different neoplastic diseases that involve the peritoneal surface. The use of CRS and HIPEC has been studied for GC with PM, with promising results in selected patients, obtaining survival rates never seen before. Moreover, HIPEC and other intraperitoneal chemotherapy techniques have been used to prevent peritoneal recurrences in patients diagnosed on locally advanced GC without macroscopic PM (adjuvant or prophylactic HIPEC). Even, intraperitoneal chemotherapy [laparoscopic HIPEC and neoadjuvant intraperitoneal and systemic chemotherapy (NIPS)] has been used as neoadjuvant treatment to reduce peritoneal disease burden in order to improve the rate of patients in whom complete cytoreduction can be achieved. Finally, patients with high volume peritoneal disease can be treated by palliative intraperitoneal chemotherapy to control the symptoms resulting from malignant ascites, using laparoscopic HIPEC or pressurized intraperitoneal aerosol chemotherapy (PIPAC). This review aims to update the management of PM from GC origin in these different clinical scenarios, based on the literature and the experience of the authors.

Keywords: Gastric cancer (GC); cytoreductive surgery (CRS); early postoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy (EPIC); hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC); peritoneal metastases (PM); pressurized intraperitoneal aerosol chemotherapy (PIPAC).