Ovarian cancer forum held in Beijing

Helping ovarian cancer patients attain high-quality, long-term survival is now the key focus of medical treatments of the disease, said experts at a forum held in Beijing on Monday, which marked the 11th World Ovarian Cancer Day.

During the forum, doctors shared their latest views and medical practices while patients and their families shared their personal experiences.

The event was jointly hosted by the Beijing Bethune Charitable Foundation and the Health App of People's Daily, and supported by the foundation and Zailab, a domestic innovative biopharmaceutical company.

Di Wen, president of the obstetricians and gynecologists branch of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association and director of the obstetrics and gynecology department of Shanghai Renji Hospital, said that ovarian cancer has a hidden onset and there are no typical symptoms in early stages.

However, experts have reached a consensus that the treatment of ovarian cancer has entered an era of chronic disease management, and doctors and patients should consider recurrent ovarian cancer as a chronic disease.

Prolonging the interval between the completion of chemotherapy and a recurrence or disease progression is currently the main approach to improving the prognosis of patients with recurrent ovarian cancer, said experts.

"The use of PARP inhibitor as maintenance treatment is aimed at prolonging the interval and enhancing the effectiveness of relapse treatment, which would improve the survival of ovarian cancer patients. In this way, it will be no longer difficult to achieve a five-year survival for many patients," said Wu Ming, a chief physician at the gynecological oncology center of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital.

With the application of personalized and precise medical treatment methods, including gene testing, the treatment level of ovarian cancer in China is now on par with that in the West, said Zhang Shiqian, a chief physician at the obstetrics and gynecology department of Qilu Hospital of Shandong University.

"The five-year survival rate among patients has improved these years, and so has the recurrence rate," said Zhang, who is also chairman of the ovarian cancer committee of integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine affiliated with the China Anti-Cancer Association.