Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death from a gynecologic malignancy in the United States. There are approximately 26,000 new cases and 14,500 deaths annually. Primary peritoneal and fallopian tube carcinomas are significantly less frequent than ovarian cancer, but outcomes and treatments are identical. The recommended initial treatment for these diseases is to perform a staging operation with aggressive debulking of tumor. These patients then receive intravenous, or intraperitoneal, taxane and platinum-based chemotherapy to treat the residual disease. This treatment yields overall median survivals of approximately 37 months in patients that were suboptimally debulked (residual tumor, >1.0 cm in diameter) and 49 months in those with optimally debulked disease (residual tumor, 1.0 cm in diameter). Overall, approximately 75% of those with Stage II-IV ovarian cancer will respond to their initial adjuvant chemotherapy and 50% are clinically without evidence of disease at the completion of their adjuvant chemotherapy cycles. However, 50% of these patients would have persistent disease identified at the time of a second look laparotomy. Of those with a negative second look laparotomy, 50% will experience a recurrence of their disease. Second Look Laparotomy is a controversial choice for patients who have no evidence of disease by non-invasive means after their primary treatment. It appears that some patients may benefit in Progression Free Survival (PFS) when complete cytoreduction of residual disease is possible, but no randomized trial exists to prove 5 year survival benefit. Patients that recur after their initial adjuvant chemotherapy will generally die from their disease, as salvage therapy has not been very effective. At the present time, the initial adjuvant regimen consists of a platinum and paclitaxel-based regimen as the standard therapy for these patients. Cisplatin was originally used for the intravenous regimens and continues to be used for intraperitoneal (IP) therapy. In fact, the GOG has now made IP cisplatin a part of the standard adjuvant regimen for optimally debulked ovarian cancer patients. This shift was based on the analysis of three randomized trials that support the IP cisplatin route. Patients in this Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) trial underwent optimal cytoreductive surgery and were randomly assigned to a control group receiving intravenous paclitaxel and intravenous cisplatin or to an experimental group receiving intravenous paclitaxel on day 1, intraperitoneal cisplatin on day 2, and intraperitoneal paclitaxel on day 8. At a median follow-up of 50 months, there was a statistically significant prolongation of median progression-free survival and overall survival in the intraperitoneal treatment group (a benefit of 5.5 and 15.9 months, respectively). This represented a 25 percent reduction in the risk of death. This 15.9-month improvement in median overall survival is one of the longest survival benefits ever observed for a new therapy in gynecologic oncology.