Stomach Cancer Chemo

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Anchor lead: A new
approach to chemotherapy may help people with stomach cancer, Elizabeth Tracey
reports

Many people diagnosed with stomach cancer have advanced
disease at the time of diagnosis, rendering treatment more difficult and
reducing the chances for survival. Now a new approach to chemotherapy may help.
Fabian Johnston, a stomach cancer surgeon and researcher at Johns Hopkins,
describes the intervention.

Johnston: For patients with stage 4 disease that’s spread
throughout the peritoneum or the abdomen, three or four out of ten patients
present like this, what we’re looking to do is called bidirectional therapy. They’re
getting chemotherapy via the IV or port, which is standard, and also in the
abdomen, in the peritoneum, on alternating weeks. What happens is chemotherapy
doesn’t always penetrate very well to those peritoneal linings so by providing the
right chemotherapy to those patients we’re hoping that that will give them
prolonged survival, also give them better quality of life overall.  :31

Johnston says surgery is also needed, and he’s optimistic that
this combined approach will help people with stomach cancer. At Johns Hopkins,
I’m Elizabeth Tracey.