According to a story from KVIA, the University Medical Center at El Paso, Texas, is offering an innovative “hot” chemotherapy treatment that has the potential to treat a variety of cancers that affect the abdominal region, such as colon cancer and ovarian cancer. Officially dubbed hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC), this unique treatment approach is currently only being offered at a small number of medical centers and hospitals across the country.
About Ovarian Cancer
Ovarian cancer, like many other types, often only causes vague symptoms at first. The chance of a woman getting ovarian cancer is related to how long a woman spends her life ovulating. This means that women who begin doing this earlier or stop ovulating later than usual are at a greater risk. Other risk factors include not having children, use of fertility medication, exposure to pesticides and herbicides, and a family history. Symptoms include bloating, abdominal pain, swelling, and loss of appetite. The five year survival rate for ovarian cancer is 46 percent on average. To learn more about ovarian cancer, click here.
The HIPEC Procedure
Were it not for UMC, patients would have to travel out of the state in order to receive HIPEC. The treatment involves a chemotherapy “bath” that is heated to almost 108 degrees. One of the reasons that HIPEC is not so easily found is because there is special equipment needed to do it, and it also is intended for use only after an extensive surgery that can last anywhere from eight to twelve hours. This lengthy procedure involves the physical removal of as many cancer cells as is safely possible. Once this has been completed, the HIPEC treatment begins in order to kill off any stragglers that couldn’t be eliminated with the surgery.
A New Hope
While the entire process does take a long time, HIPEC has been able to offer improved survival rates and can help prolong the lives of the patients that receive it. Often, when patients present with advanced stage cancer, HIPEC is one of the few options that can still offer a chance of longer survival.
One colon cancer patient, Rosa Isela Chavez, is grateful for the new opportunity that HIPEC has given her.
“We want to live for our grandchildren,” she said.
