Oklahoma City attorney Laura Cross said she was ready for a cure. While the treatment she received wasn't new or easy, it did help her in her battle against ovarian cancer.

"I was looking for something that will get rid of this disease and keep it gone," Cross said of the clinical trials for inteaperitoneal or IP chemotherapy at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and other centers nationwide.

With IP chemotherapy, the cancer-fighting drug is delivered directly to the abdominal cavity by way of a surgically implanted catheter or port, instead of into a vein in the arm, hand or chest.

Results of the clinical trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute appear in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. In the study, women treated with IP chemotherapy lived 16 to 17 months longer than those who received intravenous chemotherapy alone.

“All of the fluid that you put into the abdomen is re-absorbed into the blood stream,” explained Joan Walker, M.D., of the OU Cancer Institute, principal investigator and co-author of the study. “The cancer-fighting drug gets into the blood stream so that you bathe the entire blood stream with it, but you also get a huge concentration – a 100-fold concentration of the drug bathing the tumor itself.”

She said the treatment first emerged about 20 years ago, but was abandoned by many specialists because of difficulty managing side effects. Still early research showed promise of improving outcomes. Walker, her colleagues at the OU Cancer Institute and others nationwide decided this aggressive treatment regimen deserved another look.

“This clinical trial made us finally determine that we really need to use this therapy. It showed that irrigating the abdomen with a specific cancer-fighting drug results in a marked survival advantage -- 16 to 17 months in this study, which is a more than a year of extra time for these patients.”

Walker explained the success of the treatment begins with the skill of the surgeon. She said it is important to remove as much of the tumor as possible because the less tumor the chemotherapy has to kill, the more likely it will be successful.

The study also points to the need to find ways to better control the side effects related to the aggressive treatment regimen.

The study involved 429 women with Stage III (advanced) ovarian cancer; 205 received IP chemotherapy. However, due to complications and side effects related to the treatment, only 42 percent of them were able to complete all six cycles of the IP chemotherapy. Yet, survival rates still improved dramatically.

“If 100 percent of patients could achieve all six cycles, our survival would be all that much better,” said Walker, who also pointed out several new clinical trials are already underway aimed at reducing or eliminating the side effects related to IP chemotherapy.

“The patients are going to demand that we press on with difficult work,” she said. “This is not easy therapy. However, the patients have proven that they are resilient and that they will be willing to suffer a little bit more inconvenience and a little bit higher complication rate to get 16 or 17 extra months. Patients have the choice.”

Although Cross experienced side effects with the treatment, including hair loss, muscle weakness, fatigue and some neuropathy, she said most of the side effects have now subsided.

“The hair loss is transient. It all grows back,” Cross added. “The muscle weakness - you can build it back. The neuropathy is something that I'll just live with. It's not that severe. It's a small price to pay to get rid of the cancer.”

• More than 22,000 women in this country will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer this year alone.
• Nearly 16,000 will die from it.
• The sooner ovarian cancer is found and treated, the better a woman's chance for recovery.
• Ovarian cancer is hard to detect early, though. Many times, women with ovarian cancer have mild or no symptoms until the disease is in an advanced stage.