Systematic Second-look Surgery Plus HIPEC in Patients Without Evidence of Recurrence, at High Risk of Carcinomatosis After Colorectal Cancer Resection.

Introduction: To analyze the impact of systematic second-look surgery plus hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) performed 1 year after resection of the primary tumor, in asymptomatic patients at high risk of developing peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC).

Methods: Between 2012-2016, 33 patients without any sign of peritoneal recurrence on imaging studies were prospectively included in the study and underwent second-look surgery aimed at treating limited PC earlier and were prospectively recorded. They were selected based on 5 primary tumor-associated criteria: resected minimal synchronous macroscopic PC (n = 10), synchronous ovarian metastases (n = 2), positive peritoneal cytology (n = 2), pT4 primary tumors (n = 15) and perforation (n = 4).

Results: PC was found and treated by cytoreduction plus HIPEC in 10 of the 33 (30.3%) patients, although it was detected in only 2/15 patients of the pT4 subgroup (13.3%). The patients without PC underwent complete abdominal exploration plus HIPEC. Median follow-up was 14.5 months. One patient died postoperatively at day 55. Severe morbidity rate (Clavien-Dindo III-V) was low (15.2%). The 3-year overall survival rate was 93% and the 3-year disease-free survival rate was 33%. Peritoneal recurrences occurred in 4 patients (12.1%), 2 of whom had macroscopic PC discovered at the second-look (20%), while the other 2 patients had no macroscopic PC (8.7%) (P = .04).

Conclusions: The second look + HIPEC strategy in our series of patients at high risk of developing PC, allows its early detection and its treatment in 30.3% of cases, with a very low rate of peritoneal recurrence. It is important to continue evaluating the results to increase the accuracy of the inclusion criteria, especially the pT4 criterion that in this series has a low predictive power for the occurrence of PC.