Ovarian cancer affects approximately 4,600 women each year in France, according to figures from the National Institute of Health (Inserm). If this disease remains incurable, researchers from the hospital center of the University of Montreal (CHUM) have set up a research protocol with the aim of increasing the life expectancy of patients.
“The minute we detect the disease, the patients are almost always at stage 3 or 4”, indicates to the Canadian site Canoe Doctor Diane Provencher, gynecologist oncologist at the CHUM. “We’re dealing. There’s going to be a nice response first, but they’re all going to come back.” When surgery cannot be considered because the tumor is too large, chemotherapy remains the main treatment of this type of cancer.
The protocol of hope
“Madame tout-le-monde, at an advanced stage and doing ordinary treatments, can go” to seek “between 42 and 48 months of survival, at this moment”, adds the doctor. The protocol implemented by Dr. Provencher in collaboration with European and American colleagues would extend life expectancy by an additional five years.
Currently, 214 patients are participating in this trial, during which chemotherapy products are injected directly into the stomach and into the veins.
