Study Defines Characteristics of Long-Term Ovarian Cancer Survivors

(March 22, 2016) A new article in Gynecologic Oncology describes clinical features—some surprising—found in women surviving high-grade serous carcinoma for ten or more years. OCRF Scientific Advisory Committee member and former grantee Douglas A. Levine, MD was senior author of the paper.

The study, a joint effort between five academic medical centers, examined 203 long-term ten-year survivors who were diagnosed at a median age of 57 years. The majority of patients had stage IIIC (72.4%) disease at diagnosis. Of those who underwent primary cytoreductive surgery, optimal cytoreduction was achieved in 143 (85.6%) patients. After a median follow up of 144 months, 88 (46.8%) patients did not develop recurrent disease after initial treatment.

Unexpected findings from this survey included 14% of patients having had suboptimal cytoreduction, 11% of patients having an initial platinum free interval of <12 months, and nearly 53% of patients having recurrent disease, yet still surviving more than ten years after diagnosis.

The researchers say that future work will compare the clinical features of these long-term survivors with the features of women will less favorable outcomes.

Read the abstract here.