The American Society of Peritoneal Surface Malignancies (ASPSM)

Excerpt

Peritoneal dissemination of intra-abdominal malignancy has traditionally represented a uniformly fatal diagnosis. Numerous investigators from both medical and surgical disciplines have pursued better treatment options. It has been a little over 30 years since John Spratt from the University of Louisville reported in Cancer Research the first “clinical delivery system for intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemotherapy.” Since then, the treatment of patients with peritoneal surface malignancies has undergone important transformation with meaningful clinical advances, although many important questions remain to be addressed. Current multimodal therapy combines cytoreductive surgery to remove all visible tumor and is coupled with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) to eradicate microscopic residual disease at the time of surgery, providing numerous patients with mesothelioma, colorectal, appendiceal, or ovarian cancers with peritoneal dissemination a reasonable probability of improved survival and quality of life. …