Medical treatment of resistant or recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer

Abstract

Epidemiologic analysis reveals that mortality rates from ovarian cancer are continuously decreasing due to the improvement of surgery and chemotherapy. However, overall, the prognosis of ovarian cancer patients is still unsatisfactory considering that only 30% of the patients are alive after 5 years. In fact, although surgery and first-line systemic chemotherapy induce complete and partial response in up to 80% of patients, with about a 25% pathological complete remission rate, recurrences occur in the majority of patients. Most of these patients are subject to repetitive treatment cycles that, although palliative in nature, are also able to prolong survival. Important results have been obtained, in particular in platinum sensitive recurrent disease where a platinum base chemotherapy is able to prolong progression-free survival and overall survival. Overall, our armamentarium for the treatment of progressive or recurrent ovarian cancer is significantly richer than in the past, and in many patients it is possible to achieve the objective to reach a chronic history of the disease. © 2006 Oxford University Press.