However, as insurance carriers are educated to the impact of this test and as technology advances bring the cost down, more patients will have access to testing. At the point of most prevalent detection of ovarian cancer, metastasis to the abdominal cavity has already occurred. The development of a vaccine in the treatment of ovarian cancer has been investigated for many years. As Cheryl Butts, MS, and Ralph Freedman, MD, PhD, note in their article, the tumor vaccines currently used stimulate antitumor immune responses and also work with cytokines. The full efficacy of these vaccines remains to be determined.
Clinical trials are underway and the results have been varied.
Currently, no definite recommendations can be made for practitioners, but this novel concept deserves attention, as it will ultimately affect patients and physicians in the future. A number of clinical trials have been conducted with the objective of ascertaining the efficacy of irradiation alone vs irradiation plus a chemical modifier in the treatment of women with cervical carcinoma. Perry Grigsby, MD, reviews the results of some of the trials in the literature. Concurrent with this review, the NCI released an announcement involving five prospective, randomized trials demonstrating that irradiation combined with chemical agents is superior to irradiation alone. Survival improvement was shown in all five studies.