ractitioners, nurses in ovarian cancer chemotherapy need to be well informed so as to provide the best possible outcome for the patient. Though nurses cannot diagnose the patient, it is imperative that they understand what is being done so as to monitor known side effects and to identify potential errors. The main topics the guideline addresses include: 1) whether the addition of platinum is beneficial, 2) what advantages exist for paclitaxel, 3) whether multi-agent therapy works better than single-agent therapy and 4) if there exists any differences between the main platinum drugs cisplatin and carboplatin.
             1) To determine if platinum was beneficial in first-line chemotherapy, studies where selected and grouped where either cisplatin or carboplatin were tested against a control arm that did not contain platinum. Cisplatin and carboplatin are both alkylating agents that inhibit DNA synthesis by initiating cross-linking of the parent DNA (Deglin & Vallerand, 1999). They could either be tested alone versus another antineoplastic agent such as cyclophosphamide or doxorubicin, or added to a regimen versus a control arm that did not contain platinum. The CCOPGI's guideline sited a noteworthy advantage to using platinum such that the Hazard Risk (HR) versus death was 0.88 with a 95% confidence interval (CI), p = .02. This yielded a 5% increase in survival at the 2- and 5-year follow-ups.
             Not surprisingly, the AOCTG's meta-analysis concludes the same values. The CCOPGI use
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