In year two, MD Anderson Moon Shots Program begins to spin off innovation | MD Anderson Cancer Center

media

Personalized surgery
A new protocol for determining which ovarian cancer patients should proceed to surgery upfront and which need presurgical chemotherapy has radically increased the rate of complete surgical removal of tumors, an accomplishment that improves patient survival.

Under the MD Anderson algorithm developed by the moon shot, a patient receives a less-invasive laparoscopic evaluation, during which two surgeons independently rank the cancer’s spread to other organs. The resulting score guides the treatment decision.

Previously, virtually all new patients had surgery to explore the extent of disease and to remove as much of it as possible. Worldwide, this practice results in 20 to 30 percent of these patients achieving “complete gross resection.” In the first 155 cases in which the algorithm was followed, complete resection was achieved 89 percent of the time......