How does negative clinical evaluation of ovarian carcinoma after full course of chemotherapy correlate with second-look laparotomy findings?

Surgical reexploration was performed in 46 patients with epithelial nonmucinous ovarian adenocarcinoma requiring adjuvant chemotherapy whose initial therapy consisted of optimum debulking and surgical staging. All patients were placed on CAP (cisplatinum, Adriamycin, cyclophosphamide) chemotherapy for at least six courses until proved to be clinically disease free (mainly CA-125 below 35 U/ml and normal ultrasonography or computerized tomography). All women underwent second-look laparotomy (SLL) after completion of adjuvant therapy. We classified SLL findings in five categories, namely, no evidence of disease, cytological evidence of disease, histological evidence of disease, macroscopic evidence of disease (< 2 cm), and bulky tumor (> 2 cm). SLL demonstrated 14 (30%) patients with disease. Of these, five cases had histological evidence of disease and nine had macroscopic disease; however, we found no patient with persistent disease larger than 1.5 cm. No patient in stage I demonstrated disease at SLL. All cases with macroscopic disease and three cases with histological disease were initially in stage III. We found that about one third of cases who were clinically free of disease had persistent disease at the completion of chemotherapy. Hence, we conclude that routine SLL is still of importance in the management of patients with epithelial ovarian adenocarcinoma except those with stage I disease.