The role of intraperitoneal chemotherapy in ovarian cancer.

Although intraperitoneal drug delivery as therapy of ovarian cancer has been employed for more than three decades, it is only over the past 10 years that a solid rationale for this therapeutic strategy in the management of ovarian cancer has been critically defined [1,2]. The basic goal of intraperitoneal cytotoxic drug administration is to expose tumor present in the body compartment to higher concentrations of drug for longer periods of time (increase both in peak concentrations and in area under the concentration-versus-time curve (AUC)) over that which could be accomplished if the same or similar drugs are delivered systemically.