The current enhanced permeability and retention (EPR)-based approved nanomedicines have had little impact in terms of prolongation of overall survival in patients with cancer. For example, the two Phase III trials comparing Doxil(®), the first nanomedicine approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, with free doxorubicin did not find an actual translation of the EPR effect into a statistic...

Background: Peritoneal metastases (PM) are a common manifestation of gastro-intestinal and gynecological cancers. Pressurized IntraPeritoneal Aerosol Chemotherapy (PIPAC) has been proposed as new drug delivery technique to treat patients with PM. During this procedure, CO2 pneumoperitoneum (12 mmHg) is established. Subsequently, nebulizer (Capnopen®, Zimmern, Germany) aerosolizes the chemothera...

Among the gynecological malignancies, ovarian cancer is most frequently associated with diffuse peritoneal carcinomatosis. Rarely, peritoneal carcinomatosis is caused by other gynecological malignancies, including endometrial, fallopian tube and primary peritoneal cancer as well as malignant mixed mesodermal tumors. Despite progress in cytoreductive surgery and systemic chemotherapy and consequ...

BACKGROUND Our purpose was to evaluate the survival of patients with pleural and intraperitoneal malignant mesothelioma and, particularly, to estimate the efficacy of chemotherapy as well as radiotherapy and surgery. A review of the literature with respect to these parameters is included. PATIENTS AND METHODS Thirty-five patients with malignant mesothelioma (28 with pleural and 7 with intrape...

BACKGROUND The association of preoperative systemic and intraperitoneal chemotherapy has been described in Eastern patients with very good outcomes in treatment responders. The aim of this paper is to describe the initial results of this multidisciplinary regimen in gastric cancer patients with very advanced peritoneal metastases. CASE PRESENTATION We present here the first four cases who rec...

Advanced-stage epithelial ovarian cancer remains a highly lethal malignancy, in spite of effective cytoreductive surgery and primary chemotherapy. Randomized phase III trials have provided the most consistent platform for the evaluation of new treatment interventions. Recently completed and ongoing international phase III studies in the primary disease setting, summarized and analyzed in the pr...

Gastric cancer (GC) is the fourth most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in the world; 53-60% of patients show disease progression and die of peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC). PC of gastric origin has an extremely inauspicious prognosis with a median survival estimate at 1-3 months. Different studies presented contrasting data about survival rates; however, all agreed wit...

PURPOSE TO REVIEW THE TWO MAIN APPROACHES OF INTRAPERITONEAL (IP) CHEMOTHERAPY DELIVERY IN OVARIAN CANCER: postoperative adjuvant IP chemotherapy after cytoreductive surgery (CRS) and intraoperative hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC). METHODS A literature search was conducted to identify studies that employed postoperative adjuvant IP chemotherapy after CRS or combined CRS and ...