Extensive lavage during resection of peritoneal metastasis from gastric cancer increases safety and reduces short-term complications, a study shows.

Chinese researchers randomly assigned 550 patients with advanced gastric cancer to D2 gastrectomy with or without extensive peritoneal lavage at 11 centres between 2016 and 2017.

In the treatment group, lavage was performed 10 times using one litre of physiological saline each time, the authors write in JAMA Surgery.

The surgery-alone group underwent no more than two lavage sessions involving less than three litres of saline in total.