How to treat bilateral ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common tumors in the female reproductive organs, and its incidence rate ranks third after cervical cancer and uterine body cancer. However, deaths due to ovarian cancer account for the first place among all types of gynecological tumors, posing a serious threat to women's lives. The cause of ovarian cancer is still unclear, and its onset may be related to age, fertility, blood type, mental factors and environment. So how to treat bilateral ovarian cancer?

1. Treatment principles

The treatment plan for ovarian malignant tumors varies depending on the pathological type, and surgical treatment combined with chemotherapy and other comprehensive treatments are often used.

2. Surgery

During surgery, detailed exploration should be performed first, including cytological examination of peritoneal washing fluid or peritoneal effusion, palpation of the diaphragm, pelvic and abdominal organs, pelvic lymph nodes, and retroperitoneal lymph nodes, in order to accurately stage the tumor. The surgical methods for early-stage patients are divided into comprehensive staging surgery and fertility-preserving staging surgery. The scope of comprehensive staging surgery includes bilateral adnexa, uterus, omentum resection and pelvic and retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. For advanced patients with extensive pelvic implantation and metastasis, it is recommended to perform tumor cell reduction surgery as much as possible.

3. Chemotherapy

Since ovarian malignancies, especially epithelial cancers, spread very early, most cases cannot be cleared during surgery, and the effect and application of radiotherapy are also very limited. Therefore, systemic chemotherapy is an important auxiliary treatment method. Especially for malignant germ cell tumors, standardized chemotherapy can significantly improve the survival rate of patients. For some advanced patients, the tumor can be reduced after chemotherapy, creating favorable conditions for satisfactory tumor reduction during surgery.

4. Radiation therapy

The radiosensitivity of ovarian malignancies varies greatly. Ovarian endodermal sinus tumors, immature teratomas, and embryonal carcinomas are the least sensitive, ovarian epithelial carcinomas and granulosa cell carcinomas are moderately sensitive, and dysgerminomas are the most sensitive. Radiotherapy after surgery can usually control ovarian malignancies. However, since malignant germ cell tumors such as dysgerminomas are mostly diagnosed in adolescents and are well-treated by chemotherapy, and the side effects of abdominal and pelvic radiotherapy are significant, radiotherapy has rarely been used for ovarian malignancies.