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Symptoms, Prognosis, Treatment & Survival Rate of Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer
Submitted by Nic on December 17, 2012
When cancerous cells can be found in one or both of the ovaries and the cancer has also spread to other pelvic and abdominal organs such as the fallopian tubes, uterus, abdominal lymph nodes, bowel, and the liver, the patient is said to have stage 3 ovarian cancer. In general, ovarian cancer often goes unnoticed or misdiagnosed in its earlier stages. The survival rate of stage 3 ovarian cancer is rather bleak; a 5-year survival rate after the diagnosis of the cancer is only around 20%.
Symptoms
The signs and symptoms of stage 3 ovarian cancer are as follows:
- Back pain
- Chronic constipation
- Pain in the lower abdominal region
- Abdominal bloating
- Irregular menstruation
- Pain during intercourse
- Frequent urination
Treatment
Depending on your prognosis, your doctor will recommend a suitable treatment plan. The normal treatment for stage 3 ovarian cancer is chemotherapy and surgery. Regrettably, the long term survival rate even after standard treatment is less than 40%. The reason being that it is difficult to completely remove the tumor with surgery, and the chemotherapy does not completely eradicate the remaining cancer cells.
Treatment options include:
- Debulking: During cytoreductive surgery or debulking, doctors try to get rid of as much of the ovarian cancer as possible. The surgery also helps in minimizing the number of cancer cells in the body that have to be destroyed afterwards, with chemotherapy. Since the mortality rate is high for patients even after surgery, all patients are given chemotherapy to improve their chances. The combined treatment of surgery followed by chemotherapy is the standard treatment of stage 3 ovarian cancer. Majority of research shows the chemo-surgery-chemo format to be most beneficial, but if the tumor is unresectable (unable to remove via a surgery), chemotherapy is the only option.
- Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy: In this treatment option, chemotherapy is focused directly into the abdominal cavity, through a large catheter, where the maximum cancer cells are present. If the cancer size has been reduced to less than 1 cm through surgery, this treatment is most effective.
- Chemotherapy: It is important to understand that surgery does not always get rid of all the cancerous cells in the body. These cancer cells are called micrometastases and eventually lead to recurrence. Following surgery, you could be asked to undergo biological therapy, chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy to get rid of these micrometastases.
Reference
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