What is Hypothermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy (HIPEC) and How Does it Work?
Mesothelioma specialist, Dr. W. Charles Conway explains the HIPEC procedure for patients.
[MUSIC PLAYING] Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy, or HIPEC for short, is essentially heated chemotherapy applied directly into the abdominal cavity. The mesothelioma tends to grow just within the abdominal cavity. It doesn't tend to spread as often in the blood to distant organs or even in the lymph nodes. So it's sort of tumor cells that are just sort of coating surfaces. And we believe that if we remove all of the disease that we can see, all the tumor tissue that we can see, that there are likely still cells left behind that we can't see. The rationale has been put forth that perhaps we could directly treat this with chemotherapy. [MUSIC PLAYING]
