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In this era of personalized medicine, patients with recurrent ovarian cancer deserve better than the 25% response rate that is associated with drugs selected based on clinical information alone. In the past decade, marked laboratory improvements have enabled chemosensitivity assay testing to yield a 0.70 correlation with response, and to accurately predict progression-free and overall survival. Compelling retrospective data supporting the use of this technology cannot be ignored while waiting for a cooperative group to test whether chemosensitivity assay should be used to direct salvage therapy.

These NCCN Guidelines Insights focus on the major updates to the 2013 NCCN Guidelines for Ovarian Cancer. Four updates were selected based on recent important updates in the guidelines and on debate among panel members about recent clinical trials. The topics include 1) intraperitoneal chemotherapy, 2) CA-125 monitoring for ovarian cancer recurrence, 3) surveillance recommendations for less common ovarian histopathologies, and 4) recent changes in therapy for recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer. These NCCN Guidelines Insights also discuss why some recommendations were not made.

This selection from the NCCN Guidelines for Ovarian Cancer focuses on the less common ovarian histopathologies (LCOHs), because new algorithms were added for LCOHs and current algorithms were revised for the 2016 update. The new LCOHs algorithms include clear cell carcinomas, mucinous carcinomas, and grade 1 (low-grade) serous carcinomas/endometrioid epithelial carcinomas. The LCOHs also include carcinosarcomas (malignant mixed Müllerian tumors of the ovary), borderline epithelial tumors (also known as low malignant potential tumors), malignant sex cord-stromal tumors, and malignant germ cell tumors.

These NCCN Guidelines Insights focus on the major updates for the 2012 NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) for Ovarian Cancer by describing how and why the new recommendations were made. The 6 update topics were selected based on recent important updates in the guidelines and on debate among panel members about recent clinical trials, and include: 1) screening, 2) diagnostic tests for assessing pelvic masses, 3) primary treatment using neoadjuvant chemotherapy, 4) primary adjuvant treatment using bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy, 5) therapy for recurrent disease, and 6) management of drug/hypersensitivity reactions. These NCCN Guidelines Insights also discuss why some recommendations were not made (eg, panel members did not feel the new data warranted changing the guideline). See “Updates” in the NCCN Guidelines for Ovarian Cancer for a complete list of all the recent revisions.