Preface

Treatment of Peritoneal Surface Malignancies

Ten years ago

The first issue presented the current state-of-the-art and provided the possible directions for future research over the next decade for peritoneal surface malignancies. Dr Sugarbaker pointed out that there are often disagreements concerning the time at which a clinical research project matures into “standard of practice” but that, in his opinion, cytoreductive surgery (CRS) and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) represented the current standard of practice for patients with

Ten years later

This second issue represents once more the state-of-the-art description by experts from around the world on the current status and future directions regarding the management of the most common peritoneal surface malignancies. Much has happened in this last 10 years and the readers will witness through these articles the tremendous efforts around the world dedicated to advance this field of peritoneal dissemination from gastrointestinal and gynecological malignancies. We have included articles

Analysis of 2003 and 2013

There is no doubt that the number of patients that are experiencing a good long-term result from the treatment of their peritoneal surface malignancy in 2013 is far superior to the number in 2003. Another uncontested statement is the fact that this difference is for the most part due to improvements in CRS and HIPEC regarding patient selection, operative technique, and better ways to deliver the heated perfusion.

That being said, numerous important questions remain unanswered. To return to Dr

Next ten years

What will happen over the next decade? There will be data on systemic therapy in patients with colorectal cancer with peritoneal dissemination. The Peritoneal Surface Disease Severity Score will become a tool to stratify patients according to the severity of their carcinomatosis. Systemic therapy will continue to improve with numerous “.ibs” and “.abs” coming into the clinical arena; this will increase the number of patients that will be eligible for cytoreductive surgery.

The question of HIPEC