Evaluating the benefits of laparoscopy in determining the extent of peritoneal carcinomatosis for patients with colorectal cancer

This article evaluated whether the use of a minimally invasive diagnostic technique called laparoscopy before surgery to treat peritoneal carcinomatosis improves the selection of patients who can benefit the most from treatment. The authors of the study found that laparoscopy can be used to select patients for whom surgery may be a possible curative treatment.

Peritoneal carcinomatosis is a medical term used when cancers have spread from the colon, appendix, or rectum to the peritoneum (a sheath that covers the abdominal organs). This type of cancer is often harder to treat because of the large surface it has spread to. A curative treatment needs the complete removal of the cancer during surgery (a procedure known as cytoreductive surgery or CS) and an additional chemotherapy treatment which is supposed to kill whatever cancer cells the surgeon missed. This chemotherapy is called hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC). HIPEC in given during surgery and it involves washing the abdominal cavity with a warm solution of chemotherapy. The outcome of this procedure depends on how spread the cancer is in the abdominal cavity. In order to determine this, the surgeon can perform a laparoscopy (the surgeon makes a small incision in the abdomen and uses a thin tube with a camera which translates into the surgeons eyes for a better view of the abdominal cavity).

In summary, this article showed that laparoscopy was successfully used as a diagnostic tool in selecting patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis for a potentially curative treatment. 

This study included a small group of patients. Larger studies are needed to confirm the results of this research.