For ovarian cancer, experts promote intense treatment

Last year, more than 16,000 women died from ovarian cancer.
associated press
Pumping heavy doses of chemotherapy drugs into the abdomen boosted survival of women with advanced ovarian cancer by 16 months in what experts call the first big advance in more than a decade against one of the most lethal cancers in women.
There's a high price, though: The treatment is so tough that nearly six in 10 women in a study could not endure it and switched to standard intravenous chemotherapy. Side effects included abdominal pain from bloating and problems with the catheter used to infuse the drugs.
Still, the National Cancer Institute is urging doctors to begin using the procedure, its first endorsement of any cancer treatment since 1999. Six medical groups focused on ovarian cancer joined in the recommendation.
The study was reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
About the disease
About 80 percent of women are diagnosed after ovarian cancer has spread because early symptoms are so mild. It is the top killer among gynecologic cancers in this country. Last year, about 22,200 American women were diagnosed and about 16,200 died from it, according to the cancer institute.
To improve on that, doctors at dozens of U.S. hospitals, led by Dr. Deborah Armstrong at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, compared chemo regimens in 415 women. Each had surgery to remove ovarian tumors, but some hard-to-reach cancer cells remain in the abdominal cavity.
Half the women in the study got standard intravenous chemotherapy with Taxol and cisplatin. The others got IV Taxol, then abdominal infusions of cisplatin and more Taxol at high doses.
The drugs were given through an implanted seal with a catheter, or tube, hanging into the abdominal cavity. The women rolled back and forth to bathe all the cancer cells in the mixture.
Median survival was about four years and two months for women who received only IV chemotherapy, but was just over 51/2 years for women who also got at least some of the abdominal chemotherapy.
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