Treatment for ovarian cancer typically involves a combination of surgery and chemotherapy.
- Treatment for ovarian cancer depends on the stage of the cancer and a woman's overall health.
- For advanced cancers, an exploratory laparotomy removes the uterus, tubes, and ovaries as well as any cancer that’s visible elsewhere.
- Chemotherapy following surgery targets cancer cells left behind.
- In cases where a suspicious mass has not been confirmed as cancer, the mass is removed and analyzed by a pathologist during surgery.
CT scans and other types of imaging are useful tools that doctors use to look at the cancer, help determine the extent of the cancer, and which treatment options are most appropriate for you.
Most women with advanced ovarian cancer, meaning Stage III or Stage IV, will need a combination of chemotherapy and surgery. How doctors combine them and which they do first depends on the individual patient.
In cases where, based on all the information available, doctors believe that the cancer has spread too widely for surgery to remove all of it up front, they’ll most likely recommend chemotherapy first. "Neoadjuvant chemotherapy" is the medical term for chemo before surgery, and the goal here is to decrease the amount of tumor so that surgery can be as successful as possible later on.
Sometimes, a patient's scan will show an ovarian mass that looks suspicious but hasn’t been confirmed as cancer. In these cases, Hanna says, he will perform either laparoscopic surgery, or a laparotomy, to remove the mass and study the tissue with a pathologist. Together, they’ll determine whether cancer is present, and how to proceed.
Surgery can take between three and seven hours, and post operative recovery typically is three to seven days.
Following surgery your healthcare team will encourage you to be up and moving as soon as possible the more you're moving around the faster you'll heal.
In Hanna's experience, "most patients, if they're still working, can go back to work in about six weeks, some even sooner if they're doing well and feeling up to it."
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