News

Beebe Offers A Cancer Treatment Now Promoted by National Cancer Institute

01/27/06

Three years ago, a multidisciplinary team at Beebe Medical Center made up of physicians, surgeons, oncologists, pharmacists and medical support staff worked together to implement an innovative cancer therapy.

The decision to use abdominal chemotherapy, known as intraperitoneal treatment (IP), together with the traditional intravenous (IV) chemotherapy methods and surgery to treat ovarian cancer came following exciting findings regarding its success shared at a meeting of the Society of Surgical Oncologists, recalls Beebe Medical Center's fellowship-trained surgical oncologist Dr. James E. Spellman, Jr.

This month, because this therapy has shown such positive results in extending the lives of patients suffering from advanced ovarian cancer, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has officially urged cancer centers throughout the nation to offer it to their patients.

Beebe's Tunnell Cancer Center was one of the first cancer centers in the country to use this therapy, Dr. Spellman says.

While the NCI reported on January 4 that early studies are showing that this multi-faceted therapy can extend the lives of these patients for more than a year, Dr. Spellman noted that Beebe has seen its patients gain a longer survival time.

We've treated dozens of patients over the past three years and we've followed them closely. We've definitely seen tremendous results, Spellman reports. We've kept disease at bay, and many patients are still disease-free.

Spellman explained that intraperitoneal chemotherapy targets cancers attacking organs in the abdomen, but that do not spread through the blood stream. Rather, they spread onto the surfaces of the organs. Once the tumor has been removed surgically, the anti-cancer drugs injected directly into the abdominal cavity are able to destroy the cancer enough to keep it controlled, for a time. Intraperitoneal chemotherapy has been used to treat other cancers spreading within the abdominal cavity.


The NCI has described the combination of surgery and intravenous chemotherapy with the intraperitoneal therapy as a preferred treatment for advanced ovarian cancer.

&we now have firm data showing that we should use a combination of IP and IV chemotherapy for most women with advanced ovarian cancer who have had successful surgery to remove the bulk of their tumor, said NCI Director Dr. Andrew C. Von Eschenbach.

According to the NCI, an estimated 22,220 women in the United States were diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2005. It causes more deaths in the United States than any other cancer of the female reproductive system, with an estimated 16,210 women dying of the disease in 2005. The most recent statistics show that only 45 percent of women survive five years after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer; the rate increases to 94 percent when the disease is diagnosed before it has spread. However, women with ovarian cancer frequently have no symptoms or only mild symptoms until the disease is advanced. As a result, only 19 percent of all cases are detected at the early, localized stage.

Tunnell Cancer Center, located in Lewes at the main campus of Beebe Medical Center, was established in 1995. It is a Commission on Cancer-approved, comprehensive community cancer center, which recently earned a Three-Year Approval with Commendation -- a designation that recognizes high-quality standards in cancer care. Tunnell Cancer Center's clinical specialties are hematology/medical oncology and radiation oncology. Nearly 200 patients visit the center each weekday.

Caption: (left to right) Dr. Steven Berlin, an obstetrician and gynecologist, and Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Beebe Medical Center, and Dr. James E. Spellman, Jr., a fellowship-trained surgical oncologist and Chief of Surgical Services at Beebe Medical Center, are prepared to perform a intraperitoneal treatment through surgery.