Comprehensive approach to advanced primary and recurrent ovarian cancer: a personal experience

Despite improvements in chemotherapy agents and schedules and new drug combinations, epithelial ovarian cancer remains a leading cause of gynecologic cancer death in Western countries. It is usually diagnosed at late stages of the disease, which makes complete surgical resection technically more difficult. The targeted comprehensive approach described in this review includes cytoreductive surgery and perioperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy. The goal of this aggressive therapy is to remove all the macroscopic disease with the use of peritonectomy procedures and visceral resections, and also to eradicate microscopic disease using heated intraoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy and early postoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy. Patients that received a complete cytoreduction followed by perioperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy had an improved survival, with reasonable morbidity and mortality, as compared with those who received incomplete cytoreduction.