Chemo Bath Heats Up Debate About Radical Treatments for Rare Cancers

Aug. 15, 2011— -- Kitty Kane went in for routine surgery to remove fibroids from her uterus. But through the tiny bikini-line incision, her surgeon discovered a tumor on her appendix slowly spewing what looked like marmalade throughout her abdomen.

After cutting out the tumor, he hurriedly washed away the thick jelly -- a mixture of mucous and cancer cells -- from 40 pounds of intestines pulled up through the small opening near Kane's pelvis. When Kane awoke, she couldn't believe her ears.

"They told me the tumor was gone, but there was still this coating," said Kane, who lives in Spokane, Wash.

A single cancerous cell in that jelly coating could attach to any organ and divide to form a secondary tumor, called a metastasis. But until that happened, doctors told her, there was nothing they could do.

"I said, 'What? We're just going to leave it?'" Kane said. "No, I'm the type who needs to do something."

Desperate for another option, Kane scoured the Internet until she came across Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemoperfusion, or "Hipec" -- a procedure that would have her abdomen split open from sternum to pelvis, filled with hot chemotherapy and swished around like a water balloon to coax cancer-killing medicine into every nook and cranny.

"It was over-the-top weird," Kane said. "I was scared, but at the same time it didn't seem like there were any other options. Either you do nothing and start cutting out parts later on, or you think, 'Let's be proactive and see if it works.'"

But the treatment continues to draw criticism from doctors who say its effectiveness is far from proven. Because metastatic cancers of the abdomen are relatively rare, large clinical trials are difficult to execute, limiting evidence of Hipec's success to smaller studies and personal anecdotes.

"Drug development undergoes decades of scrutiny at the cost of millions," said Dr. Joel Levine, founding director of University of Connecticut Health Center's Colon Cancer Prevention Program in Farmington, Conn. "Devices have to proved safety though the market place remains the test for efficacy. Here, a very invasive and potential lethal therapy is made available to those who can afford the incremental cost of the 'hot bath' with insurance generally absorbing the expenses associated with the operation."

In Kane's case, the procedure lasted seven hours, during which her surgical oncologist removed her uterus, ovaries and six inches of intestine determined to be prime seeding grounds for new tumors.

"Ovaries look like chewed gum," her doctor said, explaining that they're full of hiding places.

For two hours, hot chemotherapy filled the newly emptied cavity. Then Kane was stapled back together. And through two catheters, toxic drugs pumped in and out of her bloated belly for six more days.

"My goal was not to think I had cancer anymore," Kane said. "I wanted to do everything I could."

Now, five years later, she's cancer-free.