August 19, 2015 – IP/IV Treatment

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Anchor lead: What’s behind the reluctance to use a tried and true technique for treating ovarian cancer? Elizabeth Tracey reports

If you’re a woman newly diagnosed with ovarian cancer, you should be apprised of your eligibility for use of chemotherapy drugs infused directly into your abdomen, a technique called intraperitoneal chemotherapy.  That’s according to a new study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.  Deb Armstrong, an ovarian cancer expert at Johns Hopkins, concurs.

Armstrong: The only data for a survival benefit using the combined IP and IV approach is for newly diagnosed patients. So it’s really critical for patients to get to the right people from day one. If you don’t have surgery by somebody who knows what they’re doing and what this disease entails they may not do the right surgery and if they do they may not be conversant with putting in peritoneal catheters or knowing when to put the peritoneal catheters in, so you’re going to be behind the eight ball because you aren’t being treated by the right surgeon up front.  :31

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.