Timing isn't everything: an analysis of when to start salvage chemotherapy in ovarian cancer.

Objective: Results from GOG 178 showed a prolongation of progression-free survival (PFS) with the immediate use of chemotherapy (CT) following a complete clinical response (CR) in patients with stage III-IV ovarian cancer. We wanted to evaluate our strategy of reserving second line (2nd line) chemotherapy to the time of clinical recurrence by determining PFS intervals following first, second, and third line agents and to compare these finding to results of GOG 178.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective parallel study to GOG 178 using identical criteria for PFS definitions.