[Complications of intraperitoneal chemotherapy by the needle technique. Evaluation after ten years]

A hundred and twenty three patients with intraperitoneal cancer (mostly ovarian) were treated between 1980 and 1990 with intraperitoneal chemotherapy administered through a "needle". Local complications were infinitely fewer and less serious than those observed with materials implanted for months. General complications depended on which protocols were being used. But tolerance on the whole was better when the drugs were administered intraperitoneally. This is particularly clear with cisplatin, although the dose is doubled intraperitoneally over a period of 10 months instead of 6. In this ways there was hardly any neurotoxicity and there was a noteworthy prolongation of survival time in cases of ovarian carcinoma.