Treatment Overview
The choice of treatment and the long-term outcome (prognosis) for women who have ovarian cancer depends on the type and stage of cancer. Your age, overall health, quality of life, and desire to have children (preserve fertility) must also be considered.
- Surgery is done to confirm and treat cancer. Removal of all cancerous tissue and taking biopsies to check for the spread of cancer (surgical staging) is important for diagnosis and treatment, because the amount of cancer remaining (residual cancer) after the initial surgery may affect your outcome.
- Chemotherapy, which uses medicines to kill cancer cells, is recommended after surgery for most stages of ovarian cancer. Chemotherapy that is given after a surgery is called adjuvant therapy.
Initial treatment
The goal of the initial surgery is to remove all visible cancer. The type of surgery you will need depends on the stage of your cancer and if you want to be able to have children after having the surgery.
Recurrent or Persistent Ovarian Epithelial Cancer Treatment
Note: Some citations in the text of this section are followed by a level of evidence. The PDQ editorial boards use a formal ranking system to help the reader judge the strength of evidence linked to the reported results of a therapeutic strategy. (Refer to the PDQ summary on Levels of Evidence for more information.) Overall, approximately 80% of patients diagnosed with ovarian epithelial cancer will relapse after first-line platinum-based and taxane-based chemotherapy and may benefit from subsequent...
Read the Recurrent or Persistent Ovarian Epithelial Cancer Treatment article > >
If you have early-stage (stage I and low-grade [grade 1]) cancer and you wish to have children, your surgery may include:
- Removal of your cancerous ovary and fallopian tube.
- A biopsy of your other ovary.
- Removal of fatty tissue (omentum) that is attached to some of the abdominal organs.
- Removal of lymph nodes in the pelvis and near the large blood vessel (aorta) in the belly.
- Biopsies of other tissues and peritoneal fluids (peritoneal washings) from the belly to look for cancer cells.
Your uterus and the healthy ovary will remain, so it may be possible for you to become pregnant.
If you have a more advanced stage (stage II, III, or IV) of cancer, or you have stage I and do not want to have children, your surgery may include:
- A hysterectomy, which removes your uterus, and a salpingo-oophorectomy, which removes your ovaries and fallopian tubes.
- Collection of peritoneal fluid.
- Removal of pelvic and aortic lymph nodes (lymph node dissection).
- Removal of fatty tissue (omentum).
- Removal of as much cancerous tissue as possible.
- Biopsies of any tissue that may be cancerous.
Because this surgery removes all the reproductive organs, you will not be able to become pregnant after having it.
Chemotherapy is recommended after surgery for most women. Paclitaxel (Taxol) and carboplatin or cisplatin are commonly used medicines. The number of treatment cycles you have will depend on the stage of your disease. Chemotherapy may be given into a vein (intravenous, or IV). Or it may be given into your belly (intraperitoneal, or IP). Studies show that women who have IP treatment live longer than women who have IV treatment. But the side effects are worse with IP treatment.
Home treatment measures may help relieve some of the common side effects of cancer treatment, such as nausea, vomiting, fatigue, hair loss, stress, or sleep problems.
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