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Clinical features of long-term survivors of recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer

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Abstract

Background

Although recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is generally regarded as an incurable disease, some patients survive more than 5 years after the first recurrence. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical features of patients with recurrent EOC who achieve long-term survival.

Methods

We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 164 patients with recurrent EOC and analyzed the clinical stage, histologic subtype, primary treatment, disease-free interval (DFI), recurrence site, secondary treatment, and overall survival from the time of the first recurrence (R-OS), using the Kaplan–Meier method and the log-rank test.

Results

The median R-OS for all 164 patients was 25 months and the 5-year R-OS rate was 25.4 %. There were no significant differences in R-OS according to the disease stage. The median R-OS was significantly shorter in the 6–12-month DFI group (23 months) than in the ≥12-month DFI group (61 months) (p = 0.0002), while there was no significant difference between the 6–12 and 3–6-month DFI groups (20 months) (p = 0.161). Of the 164 patients, only 14 survived >5 years after the first recurrence. Most of them underwent surgery and/or radiotherapy in combination with chemotherapy and underwent >18 cycles of platinum-based chemotherapy throughout their treatments (median 22 cycles; range 4–44).

Conclusions

If high sensitivity to platinum is maintained, patients with recurrent EOC may have prolonged survival following repeated platinum-based chemotherapy cycles. Moreover, their prognosis improves when chemotherapy is combined with secondary cytoreductive surgery and/or irradiation.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare and no funding received for this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Gynecology, Cancer Institute Hospital, 3-8-31, Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo, 135-8550, Japan

    Haruko Iwase, Toshio Takada, Chiaki Iitsuka, Hidetaka Nomura, Akiko Abe, Tomoko Taniguchi, Kimihiko Sakamoto, Ken Takizawa & Nobuhiro Takeshima

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Kitasato University School of Medicine, 1-15-1, Kitasato, Minami-ku, Sagamihara-shi, Kanagawa, 252-0374, Japan

    Haruko Iwase

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  1. Haruko Iwase
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  2. Toshio Takada
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  3. Chiaki Iitsuka
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  4. Hidetaka Nomura
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  5. Akiko Abe
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  6. Tomoko Taniguchi
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  7. Kimihiko Sakamoto
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  8. Ken Takizawa
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  9. Nobuhiro Takeshima
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Correspondence to Haruko Iwase.

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Iwase, H., Takada, T., Iitsuka, C. et al. Clinical features of long-term survivors of recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer. Int J Clin Oncol 20, 143–149 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10147-014-0687-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10147-014-0687-1

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