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Women battling often-fatal ovarian cancer now will undergo a new treatment regimen — and gain at least a year of extended life — due to breakthroughs developed at the University of Arizona.

The new regimen involves delivering potent chemotherapy drugs directly into the abdomen, after surgery to remove as much tumor as possible.

The treatment was developed during the past two decades by University of Arizona Cancer Center director Dr. David S. Alberts and has been used effectively here for several years on ovarian cancer patients.

However, in a rare move, the National Cancer Institute on Wednesday issued a nationwide alert to all physicians who treat the cancer, urging them to adopt the abdominal drug delivery method as standard therapy for all women suffering the advanced form of the disease.

It is the first major achievement in more than a decade against one of the most lethal of all female cancers.

Most women with ovarian cancer — nearly 80 percent — are diagnosed after the cancer has spread beyond the ovaries, because there are so few symptoms in the early stages. That dramatically drops the chance of survival.

Ovarian cancer will strike more than 22,000 American women this year, and will kill more than 16,000. Fewer than half of its victims survive five years after diagnosis — making it the top gynecologic cancer killer in this country.

Until now, standard treatment has called for surgery to "debulk" the abdominal tumor, then delivery of two chemotherapy drugs, paclitaxel and cisplatin, intravenously.

But the results of a large nationwide study, published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, found that women who also had chemo-therapy delivered directly into the abdomen survived at least 5 1/2 years — 16 months longer than women who received IV chemotherapy only.

That is "one of the largest benefits ever observed" in a new gynecologic cancer therapy, Dr. Steven A. Cannistra of Harvard Medical School wrote in an editorial on the study.

The new therapy not only infuses the drugs directly to the cancer cells remaining in the abdomen, it also allows higher doses of the drugs to be given, increasing their potency.

The regimen used in the trial was designed by the UA's Alberts, who published early results of it two years ago in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, and called for its widespread use then, writing, "We owe our patients nothing less."

That was after Alberts designed and ran the first clinical trial demonstrating its success 10 years ago at the Arizona Cancer Center. His team of researchers worked to develop the abdominal drug regimens though the 1970s and '80s.

But despite the repeated trial successes, standard use of the therapy was resisted for several years, apparently because many doctors found it more complicated to deliver, and not well-tolerated by many patients.

"But now we have firm data showing we should use (it) in most women with advanced ovarian cancer who have had successful surgery to remove the bulk of their tumor," Dr. Deborah Armstrong, medical oncologist at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, who headed the latest study, said in a statement released Wednesday by the National Cancer Institute.

That conclusion is supported by six professional medical societies with expertise in ovarian cancer.

Alberts called the NCI's move "a revolutionary change in the way ovarian cancer is treated from now on." He added, "I'm really excited about it."

But Alberts also cautioned, "we still have a long way to go before we can declare victory over this devastating disease."

Complaints about how "tough" the regimen is — that it caused bloating, abdominal pain and catheter problems, forcing more than half the women in the study to shorten the treatment course — have been resolved at the Arizona Cancer Center, Alberts said.

"Much of that has to do with inadequate training," he said. "Once people are trained in it and are using the right equipment, it's really straightforward — in fact, less difficult than IV therapy."

Alberts said that even those women who quit the therapy somewhat early still had the same prolonged survival as those who completed the full course. And all women in the study had the same "quality of life" a year later, the NCI noted.

One of the first Tucson women to use the new abdominal-delivery therapy said she had no catheter problems, but does recall getting "very, very sick" from the high doses of toxic cisplatin given that way.

"They really socked it to me, but it was so worth it. It worked. I never even thought of getting off it, not once," said Lisa Walter, now 46, who was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer nine years ago.

At the time, the mother of two young children was given only a 20 percent chance to survive five years. Today, she is cancer-free, raising her youngsters to adulthood.

"No matter how sick I was, I always knew it would last only a specific, limited time, and it saved my life," she said. "I was so incredibly fortunate to be offered this. I count my blessings every single day to be here.

"But it is amazing it's taken this long to be accepted."