Deciding if Ovarian Cancer Surgery is Right for You
- Surgery is a common treatment for women with ovarian cancer, but not everyone is eligible, given the risks
- Age can help determine whether someone might be a candidate, as can overall health and any other conditions she has
- Sometimes, depending on the stage of the cancer and the specific woman, it may be necessary to give chemotherapy prior to surgery
But not all women will be candidates for surgery, in part because the type of surgery required for ovarian cancer is not without its risk of complications.
Read More “Generally, age is the main metric,” says Dr. James Wilder, a gynecologic oncology surgeon with South Texas Gynecologic Oncology in San Antonio Texas, part of the Baptist Health system. “I use 75 or older as an age where I’m a lot more concerned about a person’s frailty.” This is because a patient’s age can affect their overall health and likelihood to recover should a complication from surgery occur. The question as to someone’s eligibility for ovarian cancer surgery is not just dependent on their age, however. If someone has been on blood thinners for a long time, has diabetes, or some other condition, it is very important for doctors to consider how these conditions may affect their bodies’ ability to recover. “All of these things factor into [decisions about] whether to perform surgery at all,” says Dr. Wilder. “And if I am going to perform surger, [whether I can] do it minimally invasively so that they will have less risk of bleeding…”
According to Dr. Wilder, a woman’s overall health can also play into whether she might be eligible for what’s called “neoadjuvant chemotherapy,” which means administering chemotherapy prior to surgery so as to shrink the chemotherapy down to a point where it is easier to operate on.
“It’s really on a case-by-case basis,” Dr. Wilder says, explaining that using a small camera to look around inside a woman’s abdomen can help oncologists to decide for whom it is possible to perform surgery and for whom it might be appropriate to administer chemotherapy first.