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HEATED CHEMOTHERAPY AT SAINT BARNABAS MEDICAL CENTER OFFER ADVANCED ABDOMINAL CANCER PATIENTS LONGER LIFE Livingston, N.J. — Saint Barnabas Medical Center is the now the only hospital in the state to offer new hope for patients with advanced abdominal cancers through the ThermoChem(TM) HT-1000 System, a heated chemotherapy treatment used in conjunction with surgery. The new technique has the potential to dramatically improve the outlook for late-stage patients with colon/rectal cancer, ovarian/uterine cancer, cancer of the small bowel, and pseudomyxoma peritonei syndrome, a rare malignant disorder. The potent combination of heat, chemotherapy and specialized surgery offers an extended outlook for patients with otherwise untreatable abdominal cancers, most of whom have been given three to six months to live. The specialized system reports response rates of up to 25 percent of patients achieving a greater than two year survival rate. “Every moment counts for patients with advanced cancer, and for perhaps the first time, we can offer them real hope of meaningful long term survival,” reports Ronald Chamberlain, M.D., MPA, FACS, Chairman of the Department of Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief at Saint Barnabas Medical Center. “For some patients we can double or triple their expected life expectancy and significantly improve the quality of their lives as well.”
Surgeons use IPH in conjunction with a lengthy 8-10 hour surgery, removing as many tumors as possible from the abdominal cavity. Then, two small incisions are made and tubes are inserted, one to pump the heated chemotherapy into the patient and the other to circulate it back into the machine. The chemotherapy circulates for approximately two hours. Several studies have shown that heated chemotherapy damages the membranes, cytoskeleton and nucleus functions of malignant cells. The high temperature of the fluid is thought to increase the drug’s effect and the method of delivery allows the chemotherapy to come in direct contact with the tumors at higher concentrations. Help for those with a Dire Prognosis Patients with late-stage abdominal cancers may have had chemotherapy that did not fight the cancer. Attempts to treat this type of cancer with conventional chemotherapy and surgery are generally not successful, reports Dr. Chamberlain. To date, several thousand patients have been treated with this technique worldwide, and an expanded use in other types of gastrointestinal malignancies is under investigation. About the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center of Excellence at Saint Barnabas Dr. Chamberlain specializes in surgical oncology (cancer surgery) with a particular emphasis in upper gastrointestinal surgery (stomach, bile duct, gall bladder, duodenum, and liver and pancreas), sarcoma surgery, and advanced laparoscopic surgery. Dr. Chamberlain is Surgical Director of Cancer Surgery Services at SBMC, surgical leader of the Cancer Committee, and has developed a multidisciplinary Gastrointestinal Cancer Center of Excellence at the Medical Center to meet the complex needs of these patients. Dr. Vivek Maheshswari is the Co-Director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center, and also a surgical oncologist specializing in gastrointestinal cancers. Dr. Maheshwari recently joined the Saint Barnabas Medical Center and brings unique expertise and research interest in heated peritoneal perfusion through his experiences at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center. For more information about this treatment or the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center of Excellence at Saint Barnabas, please call (973) 322-5200. Date: April 23, 2007 [ top ] |
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