Treatment of gynecologic cancer typically requires a multidisciplinary and multitreatment approach, often involving a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and radiation therapy. These modalities can be administered sequentially or in combination, as with chemoradiation or intraoperative radiation therapy.

Primary treatment refers to initial therapy, including two special cases: (1) adjuvant therapy, which is treatment administered for micrometastatic disease after surgical management, and (2) neoadjuvant therapy, consisting of induction chemotherapy, radiation therapy, targeted therapy, or combination therapy administered before definitive surgical management. In the recurrent setting, therapies are often referred to by their sequence after primary treatment (second line, third line, etc.).

Methods used to treat gynecologic cancer are potentially damaging to normal tissue. Thus, the governing principle of all antineoplastic therapies is to maximize the therapeutic cytotoxic effect on cancer cells while minimizing toxicity to normal tissues. Unfortunately, obtaining a therapeutic effect without temporarily or permanently altering function of healthy cells, tissues, or organs is not always possible. The therapeutic index is the ratio of a toxic dose to the effective dose. An optimal treatment goal is to use chemotherapy agents and radiation doses that have a high therapeutic index.