Background and objectives: Hyperthermia, either alone or in combination with anticancer drugs, is becoming more and more a clinical reality for the treatment of far advanced gastrointestinal cancers, acting as a cytotoxic agent at a temperature between 40-42.5 degrees C. Although hyperthermic intraoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) is demonstrated to have some benefit in selected patients with peritoneal seeding, there are not enough data on the risk of damage of normal tissue that increases as the temperature rises, with possible serious and, sometimes, lethal complications.
Materials and methods: We searched on medline words like "intraoperative intraperitoneal chemohyperthermia and morbidity", focusing our attention on studies (published since 1990) which reported morbidity as bowel obstruction, bowel perforation or anastomic leak, during intraoperative intraoperitoneal chemotherapy in hyperthermia (HIPEC).
Results: Heat acts increasing cancer cell killing after exposure to ionizing radiation, inhibiting repairing processes of radiation-induced DNA lesions (radiosensitization), and also sensitizing cancer cells to chemotherapeutic drugs, particularly to alkylating agents (chemosensitization). The peritoneal carcinomatosis (a frequent evolution of advanced digestive cancer) represents one of the main indication to hypertermic treatment. In the last fifteen years, in fact, different methods were developed for the surgery treatment (peritonectomy) and for loco-regional chemotherapic treatment of the carcinomatosis (intraperitoneal intra/post-operative iper/normothermic chemotherapy) to act directly on neoplastic seeding. We found, as result of different studies, 9 articles, written about perforation after HIPEC.
Conclusion: The aim of the present study is to present the review of the literature in terms of peri-operative complications related to the hyperthermia during intraoperative chemohyperthermia procedure.