So I got diagnosed in November with stage II peritoneal and my oncologist at Cleveland Clinic keeps mentioning TTFields like it's something I should seriously consider alongside HIPEC. I've read some stuff online but most of it is about lung cancer or glioblastoma, not meso specifically.
From what I can gather, TTFields uses electric currents to disrupt cancer cell division. The patient wears these electrode pads under their clothing and it runs continuously or most of the day. The FDA approved it for pleural meso back in 2018 based on the STELLAR trial data, which showed improved overall survival when combined with chemo.
But here's what I'm trying to figure out: the data I'm finding is almost entirely for pleural cases, not peritoneal. The mechanism should work similarly on peritoneal tumors since it's the same disease, just different location. My question is whether anyone here has actually gone the TTFields route with peritoneal specifically, or whether your oncologists presented it as an option.
I worked at the Johns-Manville plant outside Cleveland from 1978 to 1985 so my exposure was pretty significant. I'm keeping detailed notes on everything my treatment team recommends because I want to understand the actual evidence base, not just what gets pushed.
Has anyone looked into this or actually done it? And did your insurance cover it or did you have to fight for approval?