Many women diagnosed with ovarian cancer are treated with chemotherapy medications, which work by killing cancerous cells throughout the body. But because chemotherapy drugs can harm the body's healthy cells while also killing cancer cells, it's important to make sure that the body is physically strong and healthy enough to tolerate the treatment.
- Chemotherapy is often an initially effective treatment option for many women with ovarian cancer.
- To be eligible for chemo, a woman needs to be healthy enough to tolerate treatment, and also be able to take care of herself.
- In some cases, if a woman has pre-existing conditions such as heart disease, stroke, or dementia, chemotherapy may be much harder to tolerate
- Typically, if a woman is able to undergo surgery for ovarian cancer, she is likely to be eligible for chemotherapy, too.
In deciding who is eligible to receive chemotherapy, Dr. Manojkumar Bupathi, medical oncologist with Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, says that doctors often consider a few different factors, one of which is a woman's ability to keep up her day-to-day activities. Can she take care of herself, or does she need a lot of assistance with activities of daily living?
Read More“The short answer to that is no. Age is a mere number. You can have someone in their mid-thirties who has a ton of medical issues and biologically is [more] like an 80-year-old. Similarly, you can have an 80-year-old with no medical history whatsoever, is highly functional, and [maybe] in fact working, who can be treated as a 30-year-old.” Bupathi says that he may have to make some modifications in the dosing, but otherwise healthy, older patients should do fine. “So, the answer to how do you factor my age in to this? is, We don’t."
Other oncologists say that generally speaking, if a woman is strong enough to undergo surgery for ovarian cancer, she is likely to be eligible for chemotherapy, too. This is a good thing, because while every woman's cancer is different, the data shows that ovarian cancer tends to be one of the most chemo-sensitive tumors, and many gynecologic oncologists recommend chemotherapy at some pointor at multiple pointsduring the course of treatment.
In most cases, ovarian cancer treatment is a combination of chemotherapy and surgery. And while this may remain the standard of care for most women, what may differ significantly, based on each patient's unique case, is the timing at which the chemotherapy is administered and in how many cycles it is given.
Many women, for instance, will receive chemotherapy after surgery, and will receive about six cycles of it. Other women may need to have three or four cycles of chemo prior to their surgery called "neoadjuvant chemotherapy" followed by additional chemo given after surgery.
The timing, frequency, and dose of chemotherapy should all be decisions that you and your oncologist will make together.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
