A small, preliminary study has found that women who are given chemotherapy to shrink their ovarian cancer tumor before surgery fare better than those who go the traditional route and have surgery first, followed by chemo.
The researchers divided the women into two groups – one that had surgery first and then six cycles of chemotherapy and one that had three cycles of chemo first, followed by surgery and then three more cycles of chemo.
The women in the study who had chemo first had shorter hospital stays following surgery and less blood loss. More importantly, their doctors were able to remove more of the tumor, which could lead to better outcomes in the long run. Women who had chemo first had the same rate of recurrence as those who had surgery first. But they had seemed to go longer before the cancer returned.
This is just a pilot study and much more research is needed to make sure these results are accurate.
2 responses so far ↓
1 manykittiesmama // Nov 18, 2009 at 9:44 am
My Doctors had me do a course of Avastin before my first surgery to shrink the tumor & (hopefully) knock out it’s blood supply. I’m still hanging in two years later, so it must have helped.
2 Karen R // Nov 24, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Glad to hear that seems to have worked for you. It’s also interesting because it’s a different approach from the one taken in the study, which used conventional chemotherapy. Avastin is something else – a drug designed to target the tumor’s blood supply. Very interesting – thanks for letting us know about it.
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