Cytoreductive surgery with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy as salvage treatment for a late wound recurrence of endometrial cancer

Endometrial cancer (EC) is usually diagnosed at an early stage, when surgery alone may be curative, but 20- 25% of patients with EC have higher-risk early-stage disease requiring radiation therapy alone or in combination with chemotherapy, in addition to surgery. Most EC relapses are either pelvic or distant metastases and occur within the first three years after hysterectomy. Laparotomy wound recurrences of EC are extremely rare, and only a few cases have been previously reported. We describe the unusual case of a late wound recurrence from an EC surgically removed 10 years previously which was successfully treated by cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) after response to a hormonal therapy. Ten years after abdominal hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, on computed tomographic (CT) scan, a 70-year-old woman exhibited an abdominal mass of 3.5 cm, strictly adherent to the abdominal rectal muscle. CT-guided biopsy revealed estrogen- and progesterone receptor-positive metastasis from EC and the patient was treated with megestrole acetate. The whole body 18F-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET)/CT showed a marked metabolic response at the single metastatic site, with no further metastases, and the patient underwent surgical resection of the mass followed by immediate HIPEC perfusion with cisplatin. No residual macroscopic disease was present at the end of surgery and no complications occurred during the hospital stay. At 12- month follow-up, the patient is alive without evidence of disease. Although this approach is still being investigational for peritoneal recurrence of EC, our report confirms its feasibility and its promising results in highly selected patients.