["After-reintervention" in ovarian cancer]

Reoperation in ovarian cancer, following the initial surgery and the subsequent general chemotherapy, is currently agreed upon by most authors: it permits to evaluate the results of chemotherapy; when new lesions appear or lesions that have been left in place increase in size, re-operation enables excision of these lesions. But, after this surgical stage, opinions regarding treatment differ. In the case of complete remission, macroscopic and microscopic, it is possible to do nothing, to resume chemotherapy, to perform an abdomino-pelvic radiotherapy in limited doses. In the case of an incomplete microscopic remission and the persistence or aggravation of previous lesions, only a different type of chemotherapy is performed. Its chances of success are very remote. On the whole, chemotherapy is seldom used; chemotherapy may and must be used, especially in case of minor lesions. It must be emphasized that remission does not mean cure, and that incomplete remission does not obligatorily imply a poor prognosis.