Abdominal chemotherapy more effective for ovarian cancer (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An injection of anti-cancer medicines directly into the abdominal cavity has been shown to be highly effective in prolonging the lives of women with advanced ovarian cancer, a study said.

Abdominal, or intraperitoneal, chemotherapy, a 50-year-old technique that has lost popularity, proved in tests to extend patients' lives by an average 16 months more than those receiving intravenous chemotherapy, said the study in the New England Journal of Medicine dated January 5.

The study offered greater hope to the 22,000 women in the United States diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year. About 16,000 die from the disease annually.

The study, led by Deborah Armstrong of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Maryland, compared the two treatments on 415 women with ovarian cancer over seven years.

Roughly half the patients received the more common intravenous chemotherapy using the drugs Cisplaine and Taxol.

The other half first received Taxol intravenously and then both of the drugs injected abdominally in high doses through a catheter.

The results showed that patients receiving abdominal chemotherapy survived an average 65.6 months, compared to 49.7 months for those taking intravenous treatment.

For those getting abdominal therapy as well, relapse-free survival was 23.8 months, compared to 18.3 months for the other group.

However, those taking the abdominal treatment had significantly worse side effects during the treatment, including suppressed blood counts and neurological problems.

Problems linked to the catheter meant that less than half of the women on abdominal chemotherapy completed all six treatments.

But after one year, side effects for both treatments were roughly equal.

"IP (intraperitoneal) therapy is not a new treatment approach, but it has not been widely accepted as the gold standard for women with ovarian cancer," said Armstrong in a statement from the US National Cancer Institute.

"There has been a prejudice against IP therapy in ovarian cancer because it's an old idea, it requires skill and experience for the surgery and for the chemotherapy, and it's more complicated than IV (intravenous) chemotherapy.

"But now we have firm data showing that we should use a combination of IP and IV chemotherapy in most women with advanced ovarian cancer who have had successful surgery to remove the bulk of their tumor," she said.