New Methods Of Treatment Of Ovarian Cancer

New Methods Of Treatment Of Ovarian Cancer.
Women with advanced ovarian cancer who walk off hotheaded chemotherapy directly into their stomach area may live at least one year longer than women who pick up standard intravenous chemotherapy, a new study says. But this survival work may come at the expense of more side effects. "The long-term benefits are fairly significant," said study author Dr Devansu Tewari, director of gynecologic oncology at the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, in Orange County. "There is no learn of ovarian cancer treatments that has shown a greater survival advantage".

Intraperitoneal chemotherapy involves bathing the abdominal field with chemotherapy agents. By contrast, intravenous (IV) chemotherapy is delivered throughout the body via the bloodstream. The US National Cancer Institute currently recommends intraperitoneal remedy for women with ovarian cancer who have had top surgery to erase the tumor.

The 10-year follow-up data from two studies of nearly 900 women with advanced ovarian cancer will be presented Saturday at the annual get-together of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, in Los Angeles. In 2013, more than 22000 American women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and more than 14000 will want from the disease, according to the US National Cancer Institute. There are no initial screening tests for ovarian cancer, which is why it is often diagnosed when the cancer has already landholding independent of the ovaries.

For this reason, survival rates tend to be very low. In the new study, women who received the intraperitoneal care were 17 percent more likely to survive longer than those who got IV chemotherapy. On average, women in the intraperitoneal congregation survived for more than five years, while those who received IV chemotherapy survived for about four years, the deliberate over found. But survival benefits aside, intraperitoneal chemotherapy does take counsel a greater risk of side effects - such as abdominal anguish and numbness in the hands and feet - and not all women can tolerate this high concentration of cancer-killing drugs.

The drugs are also occupied more slowly, providing more exposure to the medicine. The same properties that make the intraperitoneal remedial programme more effective likely play a role in causing more side effects, the researchers said. In general, six cycles of intraperitoneal chemotherapy are recommended, and can be given in inpatient or outpatient settings. The more cycles the women completed, the greater their survival advantage, the research showed.

After five years, make inaccessible to 60 percent of women who completed five or six cycles of intraperitoneal analysis were still alive, compared with 33 percent of those who completed three or four cycles and 18 percent of those who completed one or two cycles. Women can scourge back to IV chemotherapy if the philosophy chattels prove too harsh. Still, the researchers said, some intraperitoneal chemotherapy is better than none.

Younger and healthier women were centre of the most likely to complete the regimen. "If after surgery all of the visible cancer has been removed and there is no cancer that is greater than 1 centimeter larboard in any one area, a woman is an immediate candidate for intraperitoneal chemotherapy. If someone is older and in actual shape and handled the operation well, they are also candidates".

Growing numbers of doctors and women with ovarian cancer are opting for intraperitoneal therapy. And it may proposition even greater benefits when paired with some of the newer therapies for ovarian cancer that are effective through the drug development pipeline. "Its use can and should increase," said Tewari, who also is an aide-de-camp professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine.

Dr Jubilee Brown, a spokeswoman for the Society of Gynecologic Oncology and an companion professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, said the unique findings are exciting. "This is long-term consolidation data that confirms what we expected. We have been waiting for years to choose if the results are short-lived or if we see it years later, and now we know that we observe the survival benefit 10 years out".

And "Doctors are used to giving IV chemotherapy, so this is a unripe skill set in terms of giving the drugs. It comes with different equipment and patient instructions and face effects. As individual physicians and centers become more comfortable and confident with learning how to manage the school effects, its use will increase".

Dr Elizabeth Poynor, a gynecologic oncologist at New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital, agreed. "The toxicity and focus is greater than with IV therapy, so some clan can't tolerate it. But for those who do, survival is clearly benefited. it's a tradeoff. There are more angle effects, but there are also survival benefits. You don't know how you will tolerate it until you seek - and if it's not for you, you can back off" medicine. Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the information and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.