A trial comparing surgery before and during chemotherapy for ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer (CHORUS)
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This trial was for women with ovarian cancer, fallopian tube cancer, and primary peritoneal cancer that had spread. This trial looked at whether giving some chemotherapy before as well as after surgery, was as good as giving all the chemotherapy after surgery. This trial was supported by Cancer Research UK.
More about this trial
Doctors often treat the following cancers with surgery and then chemotherapy
But sometimes they are not able to remove all the cancer during surgery.
Doctors thought that if patients had some chemotherapy before surgery this might shrink the cancer (patients then had the rest of the chemotherapy after the operation). Hopefully this would mean that the doctors would be able to remove more of the cancer during the operation. But they were not sure how well this would work.
In this trial you either had surgery, followed by chemotherapy. Or you had some chemotherapy first (
), followed by surgery and then the rest of your chemotherapy. The aim of the trial was to find out if the timing of chemotherapy and surgery affected how well treatment worked.
Summary of results
The trial team found that having some chemotherapy before surgery worked just as well as having surgery then chemotherapy.
This was a phase 3 trial. It was a randomised trial that recruited 550 women with advanced ovarian cancer. They were put into 1 of 2 groups by a computer and neither they nor their doctor could choose the group they were in.
- 276 women had surgery before having chemotherapy
- 274 women had some chemotherapy before having surgery, with some more chemotherapy after surgery
They looked at the average overall length of time the women lived. For those women who had surgery first it was just over 22½ months. For those women who had chemotherapy first it was just over 24 months.
When the researchers looked at how long the women were in hospital after surgery they found that more women who had chemotherapy before surgery had left hospital within 2 weeks of their surgery than those who had surgery before having chemotherapy.
The researchers looked at the 6 months and 1 year after treatment. Even though the women who had chemotherapy before surgery did report a slightly better quality of life at 6 months and 1 year than those who didn’t, the researchers said that the difference wasn’t significant.
The trial team concluded that having some chemotherapy before surgery worked just as well as having surgery first for women with advanced ovarian cancer.
We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists () and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team who did the research. We have not analysed the data ourselves.
Recruitment start:
Recruitment end:
How to join a clinical trial
Please note: In order to join a trial you will need to discuss it with your doctor, unless otherwise specified.
Chief Investigator
Professor Sean Kehoe
Supported by
Cancer Research UK
Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
NIHR Clinical Research Network: Cancer
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG)
Other information
This is Cancer Research UK trial number CRUK/07/009.
If you have questions about the trial please contact our cancer information nurses
Freephone 0808 800 4040
