What is the role in secondary debulking surgery in treatment of recurrent disease?
We talked a little bit about how important surgery is with initial diagnosis and therapy. The question that always comes up is would patients who have recurrent disease benefit from that kind of therapy as well? The honest answer is we don’t know. Because of the way ovarian cancer tends to spread, with little cells shedding off the surface of the ovary and moving throughout the abdominal cavity, we know in the recurrent disease setting, there’s not one large lump or mass that can be easily removed by the surgeon. Lots of times, there are multiple, little sites of disease that are not really amenable to surgery. It’s probably not in the patient’s best interest to undergo a surgical procedure unless there’s very clear-cut evidence that the disease can be removed surgically. The other thing that we know is that when patients undergo surgery for ovarian cancer, it’s very rare that we’re able to remove all the disease. What that means is that since there will be disease left behind, the dis
