Giovanni D. Aletti, MD

As outlined in the excellent, comprehensive review by Drs. Liu and Matulonis, ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecologic malignancy in the United States, with approximately 16,000 deaths and 22,000 new cases yearly.[1] The vast majority of patients present with intra-abdominal spread of disease at the time of diagnosis, resulting in low overall cure rates. As outlined, patients are primarily managed with primary surgical resection and subsequent platinum-based chemotherapy.

As outlined in the comprehensive review by Dr. Schwartz, cytoreductive surgery followed by platinum-based chemotherapy is considered the standard of care in the initial management of patients with advanced ovarian cancer. Considering prognostic factors for patients with advanced disease, residual disease after primary surgery is still considered to be the most important modifiable prognostic factor influencing survival. This has again been recently confirmed by a large retrospective study including six different Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) studies.[1]