Carcinomatosis is a malignant formation giving multiple metastases and developing in the parenchyma or serous membranes of organs. This term is used in relation to diseases of the serous membranes. One of the varieties of this disease is peritoneal carcinomatosis - a thin translucent serous membrane covering the surface of internal organs and internal walls of the abdominal cavity.
Abdominal carcinomatosis : the clinical picture
As a rule, this disease is accompanied by an extensive effusion in the serous cavity, which is a numerous prosovidny inclusions that merge and form larger tumors. The formation of this disease is characteristic of many varieties of malignant neoplasms of the digestive system, such as cancer of the stomach, colon and rectum, but most of its occurrence is characteristic of ovarian cancer. When gastric cancer is detected , peritoneal carcinomatosis accompanies it in 30-40% of cases of operating this disease, and is one of the main causes of death of patients. The median survival of these patients is 5 months, and 34% of radically operated patients develop isolated relapses. Patients with ovarian cancer at the time of diagnosis in 70% of cases already have peritoneal carcinomatosis.
Symptoms of peritoneal carcinomatosis
The main external symptoms of this disease are: abdominal pain and its increase, vomiting, nausea and weight loss.
Peritoneal carcinomatosis is a secondary disease and in itself appears extremely rare. The most common primary diseases against which it occurs are: gastrointestinal, ovarian, or pancreatic adenocarcinoma. In addition, lesions of the peritoneum occur with leukemia, sarcomas, carcinoid tumors and lymphomas.
Confirmation of the diagnosis is carried out by detecting moderate lymphocytosis, as well as a positive result of a cytological examination taken for analysis of ascitic fluid. In addition, a puncture biopsy is possible. The treatment of this disease is aimed primarily at the primary disease. In the presence of diffuse forms of peritoneal carcinomatosis, the prognosis is poor. If the lesions have a clear localization, and the type of cancer is highly sensitive to chemotherapy, it is possible to cure the patient with the help of radical surgery.
Quite often, against the background of lung cancer, pleural mesothelioma and breast cancer, lung cancer develops. Also, this condition can be caused by any tumor that can metastasize to the pleura and lungs.
Malignant lesions of internal organs, which include peritoneal carcinomatosis, are a group of serious diseases, the source of which is considered to be mesothelium. The group of these diseases also includes: peritoneal mesothelioma, papillary cancer of the serous membrane and primary peritoneal adenocarcinoma. The favorite place for the localization of malignant lesions of the abdominal cavity is the zone of decreased mobility and intestinal motility.
At present, various modern methods are being tested as an experiment for the treatment of abdominal carcinomatosis, which include the use of new chemotherapy drugs, angiogenesis inhibitors, immunotherapy using antibodies and LAK cells, radioimmunotherapy using polymerase delivery systems, gene antisense therapy using viral delivery systems . A promising area of such research is photodynamic therapy (PDT), both as an independent method and in combination with chemotherapy and surgery.