(May 28, 2015) A recent study performed in the UK and New Zealand revealed that having chemotherapy treatments before and after surgery is associated with a higher quality of life when compared to those who undergo surgery before chemotherapy.
The study, which included 550 women with Stage III or IV ovarian cancer, concluded that shrinking the size of the tumor before surgery could become the new standard of care. They found that even though the two groups of women had the same number of chemotherapy treatments and similar survival rates, they had considerably different experiences when one group underwent half of their treatments before surgery and half after. “Having chemotherapy first makes the surgery safer, the stay in hospital shorter, and women’s quality of life better,” said Peter Johnson, chief clinician at Cancer Research U.K., which funded the study.
To read the specifics about the study, you can read the abstract here (The Lancet).
