[Side effects and anti-cancer effects following intraperitoneal (ip) administration of mitomycin C (MMC)]

Nineteen patients with gynecological cancers were initially treated intraperitoneally with MMC at a dose of 20 to 52 mg/body and then intravenously with CAP regimen. The following side effects were observed in patients intraperitoneally administered doses of MMC greater than 25 mg/m2; leucocytopenia 7/12, thrombocytopenia 5/12, liver damage 8/12, renal damage 2/12, ileus 3/12 and severe anorexia 2/12. Sixteen patients were evaluated for their prognoses more than 1 year after treatment. Seven of them are well with no sign of recurrence, but 9 suffered recurrence with or without peritonitis carcinomatosa (PC). The incidence of PC among these 9 cases was not linked with clinical staging, complete or incomplete resection or the dose of MMC administered, but rather with the respective histopathology; mesonephroid 2/2, metastatic 2/2, mucinous 1/1, serous 0/3, endometrial corpus 0/1. The results suggested that the former 3 kinds of cancer did not respond to i.p. infusion of MMC, whereas the latter 2 were sufficiently sensitive to MMC to prevent the occurrence of PC.