1995 Volume 34 Issue 4 Pages 751-756
Repeated peritoneal washing cytology using a subcutane ous reservoir was performed to evaluate the usefulness of this method for assessing the efficacy of chemotherapy.
1. Peritoneal washing cytology using a reservoir can be repeated easily to assess peritoneal cytologic features over time.
2. The results of preoperative peritoneal washing cytology using a reservoir coincided with the cytologic findings obtained at laparotomy.
3. The specificity of peritoneal cytology in specimens cytologically positive for cancer was 100%. The sensitivity of this cytology for detecting malignancies was 62.5%. In the cases in which the results of peritoneal cytology converted to cancer-negative after chemotherapy, the specificity of the results of cytology for demonstrating the efficacy of chemotherapy was 86%. In contrast, most of cases in which the cytology results converted to cancer-positive were negative on imaging examinations and/or negative for tumor markers, suggesting that this cytology by reservoir is useful for early detection of peritoneal recurrences.
4. After intraperitoneal chemotherapy, degenerative cytologic changes of malignant cells appeared in both chemosensitive and non-chemosensitive cases, and were not always correlated with the chemosensitivity of individual tumors.
5. Intraperitoneal anticancer agents and/or BRM (Sizofiran/Lentinan) considerably altered intraperitoneal cytologic features.
