The Goals of Ovarian Cancer Surgery
- The goal of ovarian cancer surgery is to remove as much cancer as possible
- Getting a women to the point where there is no visual evidence of disease can require surgeons to carefully explore the abdomen during surgery, looking for any cancer that did not appear on imaging tests
- Sometimes, the cancer can spread to places in which it is not possible to operate, making it necessary for doctors recommend receiveing chemotherapy treatment before surgery
Because of the nature of ovarian cancer — which often tends to hard-to-reach areas — the cancer may be lurking in parts of the abdomen that may not be visible on a CT scan or through an internal camera called a laparoscope before surgery. For this reason, ovarian cancer surgeons say they often have to take careful measures during the actual operation to explore the entire region and identify any cancerous areas that were not visible before surgery.
Read More “Ovarian cancer tends to spread from the ovaries and in a continuous manner through the abdomen and invade and infiltrate other structures,” Dr. Brightwell explains. “And so that infiltration can make it so that we can’t successfully get to all of those things and get to all those places without getting our hands in there and feeling all the surfaces that can hide from say a camera with a laparoscope.” In some cases, it’s important to note, ovarian cancer can spread to areas that make it difficult or impossible to remove all the cancer during surgery. If doctors are able to identify this prior to surgery, they might recommend a few courses of chemotherapy before the procedure — called “neoadjuvant chemotherapy” — to shrink the cancer down to a point at which it is operable. In other cases, surgeons might identify these areas during the surgery itself, in which case it might be recommended that the patient receive chemotherapy after recovering from the surgery to kill the remaining cancer cells. Ultimately, ovarian cancer surgeons are aiming to get a woman to the point where there is no evidence of disease left over on visual inspection of the abdomen. However, a lot of factors go into making treatment decisions. A large percentage of women with ovarian cancer will be getting a combination of surgery and chemotherapy and deciding which treatment to use first is a decision that should be unique to every woman’s individual case of ovarian cancer.
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