Surgery for Recurrent Ovarian Cancer

The use of secondary cytoreductive surgery before standard chemotherapy in recurrent ovarian cancer is controversial. Several groups have identified patient and disease factors that correlate with benefit from surgery. Complete gross resection of disease is the most important factor, and selection criteria have been developed and validated to predict this outcome. Recently, 3 parallel multicenter randomized controlled trials of secondary cytoreduction were reported and have shown mixed results but a meta-analysis suggests a benefit, particularly, in those with complete gross resection of disease.