Can a second surgery benefit some women with ovarian cancer? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Many women with ovarian cancer are initially treated with surgery and a type of chemotherapy containing platinum. Now a new study shows that if the cancer returns, some women will benefit from another surgery as well as chemotherapy. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, explains.

Nelson: Sometimes the cancer recurs, and if it recurs six months or more later, the thought is that there may still be some mileage that can garnered out of this platinum kind of chemotherapy regimen. What this did was ask the question whether you were going to get that kind of chemotherapy anyway, they randomized to go in and remove as much of the cancer as they could see and find. What they found was there was an advantage to going in and surgically removing the cancer particularly if they could completely remove all the cancer they could see. The advantage was people lived longer.  :31

Nelson notes that many additional agents are being developed for ovarian cancer that are likely to improve survival still further. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.