Anaesthetic Considerations in the Perioperative Management of Cytoreductive Surgery and Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy

Cytoreductive surgery with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy has emerged as one of the primary modalities of treatment of diffuse peritoneal malignancies. It is a complex surgical procedure with the patients facing major and potentially life threatening alterations of haemodynamic, respiratory, metabolic and thermal balance with significant fluid losses and the perioperative management is challenging for anaesthesiologists and intensive care physicians. Though the alterations are short lived, these patients require advanced organ function monitoring and support perioperatively. The anaesthesiologist is involved in the management of haemodynamics, respiratory function, coagulation, haematologic parameters, fluid balance, thermal variations, and metabolic and nutritional support perioperatively. The chemotherapy instillate used are known to cause nephrotoxicity, cardiotoxicity, dyselectrolytemia and lactic acidosis. The preoperative polypharmacy for pain control, previous surgery and/or chemotherapy, malnourished status secondary to feeding problems and tumour wasting syndrome make the task all the more challenging. The anaesthesiologist also needs to consider the perioperative care from a quality of life perspective and proper preoperative counselling is important. The present overview summarizes the challenges faced by the anaesthesiologist regarding the pathophysiological alterations during the Cytoreductive surgery and Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy in the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative periods.