[Management of ovarian cancer]

Ovarian carcinoma is the worst gynecologic cancer due to an advanced stage at diagnosis in two thirds of the cases. Advanced stages are usually characterized by a large tumor burden on the ovaries as well as metastatic disease in the peritoneal cavity. Early stages are more common in young women and the surgical treatment should comprise the tumor excision and a comprehensive abdominal staging to be sure that there is no extension beyond the ovaries--unilateral oophorectomy can preserve the fertility before childbearing. No treatment is needed after surgery in stage I without poor prognostic factors. Adjuvant chemotherapy should be applied postoperatively in the other cases. The best likelihood of prolonged survival is observed after optimal debulking surgery and chemotherapy in advanced stages. If possible surgery should be performed at first but in most advanced stage with large tumor volume in the upper abdomen according to clinical and CT-scan examination, the concept of chemosurgical debulking should be considered. Interval surgery underwent after three or four courses of front line chemotherapy but this strategy should be further evaluated by clinical trials. Currently paraplatin associated with paclitaxel is the most commonly used regimen due to its effectiveness and lower toxicity. In a near future progress can be expected with new protocols. Thank to aggressive surgery and chemotherapy many patients should be able to reach a complete remission of their disease but most of them will still die of recurrent disease. At this point, two questions should be answered: 1) how to manage the residual abdominal disease in order to prevent the recurrence. No consolidation treatment demonstrated any superiority but the French experience and trial with high dose chemotherapy supported by autologous stem cells transplantation showed recently positive results? 2) How to manage the recurrent disease with sometime indication for secondary surgical debulking and always chemotherapy? This is the field for testing new drugs or new strategies. A large number of patients should enter clinical trials in order to answer these questions and due to the very poor prognosis of this disease large attention should be given to the quality of life of theses patients.