“Grey’s Anatomy” airs at 8 p.m. tonight on ABC.
A treatment for late-stage cancer advanced by a Creighton University surgeon is expected to play a role on “Grey’s Anatomy” tonight.
Dr. Brian Loggie helped pioneer intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemotherapy, sometimes called “shake and bake,” when he was at Wake Forest University in the 1990s. He now performs about one treatment a week at Creighton University Medical Center.
The procedure, viewed with skepticism by some cancer specialists, involves surgically removing tumors in the lining of the abdomen and immediately bathing the belly with a hot chemotherapy solution. The chemotherapy is used to kill any cancer that surgery didn’t remove.
“It’s still a work in progress,” Loggie said of the procedure.
It’s called “shake and bake” by some because the stomach is massaged and manipulated to help circulate the solution inside the belly. The procedure generally is covered by health insurance.
The solution enters the upper part of the abdomen through tubing and filters downward, then comes back out through a tube and into the pumping and warming device again. It continues this circuit for some 90 minutes.
The procedure typically is used for peritoneal carcinomatosis, a cancer that spreads on the lining of the abdomen and pelvis. Patients with this cancer generally have a bad prognosis, Loggie said, but the procedure sometimes extends their lives by five years and longer.
A Minnesota company, ThermaSolutions, distributes the large device that pumps and heats the solution during the operation. “Grey’s Anatomy” representatives contacted the firm for information about the procedure. ThermaSolutions sent clinical specialist Kristen Olson to Hollywood along with the 400-pound device.
“I’m a huge fan of ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’” Olson said. “I volunteered myself.”
Olson said she has been assured by “Grey’s Anatomy” representatives that the segment will air tonight. Although she wasn’t sure how much of the program would involve the procedure, a scene was filmed in which one of the characters, Dr. Miranda Bailey, talks to other doctors about the procedure as it’s performed.
Olson manned the device in the scene. “I’m the only one wearing purple gloves,” she said.
Loggie said patients come from around the country for the operation. “There aren’t that many practitioners who also are very experienced with this,” he said.
The University of Nebraska Medical Center will begin offering the procedure next month. UNMC has recruited Dr. Jason Foster, who has been performing the procedure at Creighton.
Dr. Aaron Sasson, chief of gastrointestinal surgical oncology at UNMC, said some cancer specialists don’t think it’s an effective procedure. Sasson said he thinks it works in certain cases when tumors from the appendix, colon and ovaries have spread inside the abdomen.
Loggie said that for many of those patients, there had been no hope.
Now, he said, there is an established treatment with the potential to significantly prolong lives.
Contact the writer:
444-1123, rick.ruggles@owh.com
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