When dealing with a grave disease such as ovarian cancer, many of the options available for treatment can be extremely intimidating due to the fact that they involve surgery. Significant surgery and long recovery times both contribute to a sense of anxiety about many of the treatment options that exist when it comes to ovarian cancer. Being able to address the disease while also avoiding undue anxiety is the ideal outcome for a patient facing ovarian cancer.

Below are some of the ways that ovarian cancer can be addressed:

1. Ovarian cancer surgery
When looking for options in terms of surgical procedures that can be used to treat ovarian cancer, it is important to acknowledge the fact that the type of surgery received will depend upon the severity of the disease. If a person’s cancer has spread beyond their ovaries into other parts of the body especially, then there is a good chance that the surgery will need to be a lot more thorough. Consulting with a medical professional, having x-rays taken, and exploring all available options makes it far easier to determine what sort of treatments for ovarian cancer are ideal. For example, surgical options for ovarian cancer include:

  • Omentectomy: surgically extracts the layer of tissue that covers your stomach and large intestine.
  • Bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy: BSO surgery removes both fallopian tubes and ovaries.
  • Unilateral salpingo-oophorectomy: This surgery extracts a single ovary and a single fallopian tube.

2. Chemotherapy
Depending on the extent to which the cancer has spread, chemotherapy may be a good option for treating ovarian cancer. Having a physician take a look at the rate the cancer has spread so far, in addition to the area which it is affecting. Chemotherapy can be utilized either by injection or infusion, and will affect the entire body. Aside from these options, there is also the option of intraperitoneal chemotherapy, which delivers chemotherapy drugs into the body through a tube directly to affected areas of the body.

3. Targeted therapy
When wanting to attempt to address a disease early on, targeted therapy is a means with which medical technology can target and eliminate cells and cell clusters that are promoting cancerous growth. As a result of this specific therapy, less damage can be done to the body as a result of providing cancer treatment. Some examples of targeted therapy include monoclonal antibody therapy and angiogenesis inhibitors, both of which have roots in avoiding undue damage to the body while treating cancer.

4. Radiation
This form of treatment utilizes x-rays in order to kill cancer cells, and is often done by putting a radioactive liquid into the peritoneum. This is one of the treatments for ovarian cancer that can help some patients.

5. Immunotherapy
This is a way of encouraging the body’s own immune system to find and kill the cancer a given patient is suffering from. Vaccines are injected into the body which rest near a tumor and allow the body’s immune system to find and attack the cancer.