The Role of Inflammatory Biomarkers in PIPAC: Predicting Survival and Treatment Completion in Patients with...

Introduction: Appropriate patient selection is essential for optimising outcomes in individuals with peritoneal metastasis (PM) undergoing treatment with Pressurized Intraperitoneal Aerosol Chemotherapy (PIPAC). This study investigated the prognostic value of pretreatment inflammatory biomarkers and explored their ability to predict the possibility of completion of three or more PIPAC treatments. Method: This observational study analysed prospectively collected data from patients with PM of gastrointestinal or ovarian origin enrolled in the PIPAC OPC-1 or OPC-2 studies between March 2015 and January 2022. Six biomarkers were examined: Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR), Platelet-to-Lymphocyte Ratio, Systemic Immune-Inflammation Index (SII), C-reactive protein, modified Glasgow Prognostic Score, and Prognostic Nutritional Index. Biomarkers were obtained pretreatment, and treated as continuous variables. Survival was assessed using Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses, adjusting for covariates available prior to the first PIPAC. ROC analysis was used to evaluate the predictive performance. A p-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The cohort consisted of 130 patients, with a median overall survival (OS) of 8.7 months. Sixty percent of the patients received three or more PIPAC treatments. Elevated levels of all six biomarkers were significantly associated with reduced OS. In the multivariate analysis, five biomarkers remained independently associated with survival. NLR and SII demonstrated moderate discriminatory power (AUC > 0.70) for predicting the completion of three or more treatments. Conclusion: Pretreatment inflammatory biomarkers are objective, readily accessible and clinically applicable tools that may support the selection of appropriate candidates for PIPAC. The findings of this study encourage the integration of biomarker assessments into future PIPAC research protocols.