New Life Hope For Cancer Patients

A great news for cancer patients- a second chance.

This is a new aggressive procedure for those suffering from cancer of abdomen and intestine. This procedure is a combination of CRS (cytoreductive surgery) and hipec (hyperthermic intra-peritoneal chemotherapy). This treatment can also be used for ovarian cancer, appendix cancer, bowel cancer.

The treatment with this procedure improves the quality of life and in some cases prolongs the life.

CRS- removes all visible or macroscopic tumors from the abdominal cavity.

Hipec - a hot, high concentrated dose of chemotherapy is given in the abdominal cavity to remove the remaining microscopic cancer cells.

This treatment is prescribed for peritoneal mesthelmia which is cancer of the lining of the chest and abdomen, and for the psuedomyxoma peritonei build up mucus in the abdominal cavitity. In some cases it can be used for cancer of colon. The cost of surgery in India is about 10 lakh rupees.

There is a huge potential for this treatment, but it should be done by trained doctors in good ICUs. The awareness about this treatment is very low, and most patients who come for the treatment are in the last stages. Also this is an aggressive treatment and it can be performed only on patients who are in a reasonably good physical state and survival rate is almost double in comparison to those who underwent the standard therapy. However, the worrying part is that 8% of the patients died due to complications in this treatment as the procedure can be quite harsh for some patients there is high morbidity involved and the surgery takes a long time like eight to ten hours as surgeons have to remove parts of the affected organ.

Since this treatment requires special equipment the cost is high but compared to cost per year of patients life it is cost effective.