long term oral etoposide as second-line therapy in recurrent epithelial carcinoma of the ovary

background: the activity and toxicity of etoposide in women with recurrent ovarian cancer was evaluated in a case series of women with recurrent ovarian cancer who had measurable disease, methods: all patients had plior platinum-based chemotherapy and developed progressive disease, etoposide was given as 50mg/day for 21 days every 4 weeks until progression of disease or prohibitive toxicity, between december 1999 and january 2004,32 patients were enrolled in this study. results: 30 patients received a total of 133 cycles of etoposide. median age was 49 years (range, 19 to 75). the median number of etoposide cycles was 4 (range, 1 to 12). there were 5 partial responses (16.6%). the mean response duration was 4.8 months (range, 3.5 to 6). median progression-free interval cpfi) was 7 months (range, 3 to 13), and median survival time was 12.5 months (range. 1.3 to 36). conclusion: the major toxicity was leukopenia. one patient required red blood cell transfusions, and the main non-hematologic toxicity was nausea and vomiting. there were no treatment-related mortalities. although etoposide appears to exhibit modest activity in recurrent ovarian cancer after platinum-based therapy, response and survival durations are short.