Local radiation therapy for localized relapsed or refractory ovarian cancer patients with or without symptoms after chemotherapy.

The purpose of this paper is to prospectively evaluate the effects of local radiation therapy upon localized ovarian cancer following chemotherapy. Patients with objective relapses or refractory disease but with localized epithelial ovarian cancers and who had undergone at least one regimen of chemotherapy were enrolled in this study. External irradiation was performed on all patients. Twenty patients, with a mean age of 53.8 +/- 10.3 y, were enrolled in this study. The median number of previous chemotherapies was 2. The interval between previous chemotherapy and radiation therapy was 4.5 months. The maximum diameter of the lesions was 3.6 +/- 1.8 cm. The irradiation dose was 52.3 +/- 8.3 Gy. Neither hematologic nor intestinal toxicity >grade 3 was observed. Forty-four disease sites, including the lymph nodes, vaginal cuff, pelvis, abdomen, subcutaneous regions, and the brain were irradiated. Thirty of these sites were symptom-free before irradiation. In patients with symptoms, the symptomatic relief was obtained in approximately 50% of patients. Smaller lesions (P = 0.024) and lymph nodes (P = 0.042) demonstrated better responses than larger lesions or other sites, respectively. Regression rates correlated with longer survivals (P = 0.0195) after radiation therapy. Survival was significantly better when radiation therapy was given before patients had symptoms (P = 0.001). Survival was also better in patients with lymph node disease only (P = 0.0069). We conclude that local radiation therapy may be one of the treatment options for relapsed or refractory but localized ovarian cancer, particularly when the tumor is small and/or located in the lymph nodes, even when patients had no symptoms.