Adjuvant (post-surgery) chemotherapy for early stage epithelial ovarian cancer.

Epithelial ovarian cancer is diagnosed in 4500 women in the UK each year of whom 1700 will ultimately die of their disease. Ten to fifteen percent of all cases are diagnosed early when there is still a good possibility for cure. The treatment of early stage disease involves surgery to remove disease often followed by chemotherapy. The largest clinical trials of this adjuvant therapy show an overall survival (OS) advantage with adjuvant platinum based chemotherapy but the precise role of this treatment in sub-groups of patients with differing prognoses needs to be defined.