Modelling of some aspects of a biomedical process: application to the treatment of digestive cancer (HIPEC).

Usual therapies against malignant tumors, such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, is severe and when repeated their efficiency may decrease because tumorous cells may become resistant. Contrarily, hyperthermia has been known for some time as an effective auxiliary treatment, which can be applied repeatedly. In some cases of abdominal carcinomatosis, particularly those of digestive origin, HIPEC is considered as an promising therapeutic option. Chemotherapy and hyperthermia are combined via the perfusion of the abdominal cavity with hot fluids containing chemotherapeutic agents, thus, augmenting the influence of appropriate chemotherapeutic agents with heat. The paper deals with in vivo temperature measurements during the treatment and the identification and development of a heat transfer model of the treatment and consequently its optimization. First, the focus is on in vivo acquisition and monitoring of temperatures. Temperature probe characteristics are identified. Next, a dynamic model for the heat transfer in the patient's body during the HIPEC is outlined. Then model is validated using experimental data collected by the medical partners (St-Etienne Bellevue and Lyon-Sud, France) during in vivo HIPEC. Finally, the concluding comments are reported, including the current perspectives. Since the effectiveness of HIPEC is based on the achievement of a uniform hyperthermic intracavity temperature, properly modelling and developing supervising/monitoring methods for heat transfer for this procedure is the motivation for this research. The paper presents some preliminary groundwork for an eventual simulator and decision aid related to HIPEC.