Peripheral carcinomatosis

A carcinomatosis is a malignant formation,giving multiple metastases and developing in the parenchyma or serous membranes of the organs. This term is used specifically in relation to diseases of serous membranes. One of the varieties of this disease is carcinomatosis of the peritoneum - a thin translucent serosa, covering the surface of internal organs and internal walls of the abdominal cavity.

Abdominal carcinomatosis: clinical picture

As a rule, this disease is accompanied byan extensive effusion into the serous cavity, which is numerous prosidic inclusions, merging and forming larger tumors. The formation of this disease is typical for many varieties of malignant neoplasms of the digestive system, such as cancer of the stomach, colon and rectum, but its most common is characteristic of ovarian cancer. When stomach cancer is detected, peritoneal carcinomatosis accompanies him in 30-40% of cases of this disease, and is one of the main causes of death of patients. The median survival of such patients is 5 months, in 34% of those who underwent radical surgery, isolated relapses develop. Patients with ovarian cancer at the time of diagnosis in 70% of cases already have peritoneal carcinomatosis.

Symptoms of a carcinomatosis of a peritoneum

The main external symptoms of this disease are: abdominal pain and its increase, vomiting, nausea and weight loss.

Peritoneal carcinomatosis is secondarydisease and in itself appears extremely rarely. The most common primary diseases, against which it occurs, are: adenocarcinoma of the digestive tract, ovary or pancreas. In addition, lesions of the peritoneum occur in leukemia, sarcomas, carcinoid tumors and lymphomas.

Confirmation of the diagnosis is carried out bydetection of mild lymphocytosis, as well as a positive result of a cytological study taken for the analysis of ascites fluid. In addition, it is possible to conduct a puncture biopsy. Treatment of this disease is primarily directed to primary disease. If there are diffuse forms of peritoneal carcinomatosis, the forecast is unfavorable. 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 a radical surgery.

Quite often against a background of lung cancer, mesotheliomaPleural and breast cancer develops lung carcinomatosis. Also, this condition can be due to anyone who can metastasize to the pleura and lungs, a tumor.

Malignant lesions of internal organs, towhich refers to the carcinomatosis of the peritoneum, constitute a group of serious diseases, the source of which is considered to be the mesothelium. The group of these diseases also includes: peritoneal mesothelioma, papillary cancer of the serosa and primary peritoneal adenocarcinoma. The favorite site for the localization of malignant lesions of the abdominal cavity are zones of decreased mobility and intestinal motility.

Currently, for the treatment of carcinomatosisThe abdominal cavity is tested as an experiment by various modern techniques that include the use of new chemotherapeutics, angiogenesis inhibitors, immunotherapy with antibodies and LAK cells, radioimmunotherapy using polymerase delivery systems, gene antisense therapy using viral delivery systems. A promising direction of such studies is photodynamic therapy (PDT), both as an independent method, and in combination with chemotherapy and surgery.