MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Robert L. Coleman, MD, FACOG, FACS Chief Scientific Officer US Oncology Research MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: For years, there has been general support for surgery in patients with recurrent ovarian cancer supported by reams of retrospective studies that suggest patients live longer if they have surgery preceding chemotherapy. Suggested hypotheses from these trials were that patients most likely to benefit from the procedure were those with good performance status (could tolerate the procedure), had long platinum-free interval (surrogate for potential for chemotherapy response) and those in whom all disease could be resected. Each of these are also characteristics that would portend a good prognostic cohort in general and would likely do better than other patients without these characteristics. So there was a strong selection bias in these retrospective surveys. Thus, the call for randomized trials. GOG-213 was launched in 2007 with 2 primary endpoints: 1. Determine the impact of adding bevacizumab to paclitaxel/carboplatin in patients with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer, and 2. Determine if surgery increases overall survival. (more…)