[New trends in treatment of ovarian carcinoma (author's transl)]

Poor survival rates of ovarian carcinoma have continued to be a cause of grave concern over decades and led to growing attention and alert in recent years. Promising results have already been recorded. More knowledge of important factors with relevance to prognosis has been helpful in unitising large-scale therapeutic studies for better comparability, a desire which had been unfulfilled in the past. Close interdisciplinary cooperation between gynaecologists, radiotherapists, and chemotherapists proved to be essential to optimum programmes of therapy. Persistent basic research for better understanding of biological behaviours of ovarian carcinomas and of so far unknown factors of prognosis and persistent efforts for earlier diagnosis of ovarian carcinoma are just as important. This is the only way to more effective control of the disease which still is, diagnostically and therapeutically, one of the major problems in gynaecology.