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To achieve better understanding of the factors influencing local control of ovarian cancer, an analysis of failure in early stages of ovarian carcinoma has been carried out. The material consisted of 185 patients diagnosed in early stages; 40 of them failed in their disease, 17 with local recurrence, 23 with distant metastases. The material was analyzed with respect to age, histology, grade, size and surface of the tumor, the surgical procedure and treatment modalities, and the time between treatment and recurrence, and recurrence and death. In the analysis, both the behavior of the ovarian cancer tumor and the pattern of failure was shown to be different for each histological group.

In a randomized trial, 960 women with Stage 1-3 operable breast cancer were treated by a modified radical mastectomy alone, or by the same procedure, preceded or followed by radiotherapy (4500 rad to the breast/chest wall, and internal mammary, axillary and supraclavicular lymph nodes). Up to ten years after treatment, there is an increasing gap between the recurrence-free survival of the irradiated patients and the surgical controls. Between the two types of radiotherapy, there was no difference. There were significantly fewer distant metastases and a tendency for improved survival in node positive patients treated with postoperative radiotherapy, compared to the surgical controls, this difference was, however, statistically not significant.