Effect of carboplatin based combination chemotherapy on ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the effect of carboplatin based combination chemotherapeutic regimen given intraperitoneally and intravenously on ovarian epithelial cancer.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Carboplatin based combination chemotherapy was given intraperitoneally and intravenously to 48 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer. Of them, 10 cases with ascites had received no treatment before, and 38 patients had undergone cytoreductive surgery prior to the study.

RESULTS

The results of this study showed that carboplatin based combination chemotherapy could not only reduce the tumor mass but also decrease the amount of ascites (P < 0.05) in patients with ascites. The response rate was 80% (clinical complete response rate was 10%) in untreated patients with ascites. The 3-year survival rate of patients with ovarian epithelial cancer was 92.3% in stage I, and 30% in stage III patients after the cytoreductive surgery. Tumor recurrence occurred during the course of chemotherapy in 15% of stage I patients and 53.3% of stage III patients.

CONCLUSION

Carboplatin based combination chemotherapy given intraperitoneally and intravenously has potent effect on untreated ovarian cancer with ascites. But carboplatin based chemotherapy could not overcome the problem of drug resistance. To improve the prognosis of ovarian cancer, much more researches on the mechanisms of drug resistance need to be carried out.