Regional chemotherapy of stomach cancers

Fifty patients with a stomach cancer received regional chemotherapy by infusion. Two kinds of cancers were treated with this technique: cancers inaccessible with usual surgical treatment and some limited cancers. In most cases, the catheter was introduced by transcutaneous puncture of axillary artery. According to the site of the cancer, the extremity of the catheter was introduced into the left gastric artery, hepatic artery or coeliac trunk. Efficiency of the infusion was checked by arteriography and by gastric fibroscopic examination with intra-arterial injection of evans blue. The duration of the treatment was two weeks or three weeks. The chemotherapy was made on a sequential method, taking account of the tumoral cellular cycle. The results show an objective response in 80 per cent of the cases, 39 per cent of the non operable cancers were later accessible to surgery. This study shows that chemotherapy should be used in the treatment of any stomach's cancers before surgical treatment.