Objective: The objective of this retrospective study was to assess the clinical outcome of patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer in complete response after primary debulking surgery (PDS) or neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval debulking surgery (IDS]).
Methods: The authors reviewed the hospital records of 384 patients who underwent PDS (n = 322) or IDS (n = 62) and who were in complete response after primary treatment.
Results: Optimal (residual disease [RD] < 1 cm) and complete (no gross RD) cytoreduction rates were higher after IDS than after PDS (71.0% vs 55.9%; P = 0.001 and 51.6% vs 35.7%, respectively; P = 0.02). Tumor recurred in 73.0% of the 322 complete responders after PDS versus 87.1% of the 62 complete responders after IDS (P = 0.01). The IDS group showed a higher recurrence rate within 6 months (11.3% vs 3.1%: P = 0.01) and a trend to higher recurrence rate between 6 and 12 months (30.6% vs 19.9%). Tumor recurred in 57.4% of the 115 completely cytoreduced patients after PDS versus 87.5% of the 32 completely cytoreduced patients after IDS (P = 0.001). The IDS group showed a trend to higher recurrence rate within 6 months (6.2% vs 1.7%) and a higher recurrence rate between 6 and 12 months (37.5% vs 15.6%; P = 0.01). Two-year, 5-year, and 7-year progression-free survival were 65.8%, 40.8%, and 39.3% for completely cytoreduced patients after PDS versus 43.8%, 12.5%, and 12.5% for completely cytoreduced patients after IDS (P = 0.001); and 2-year, 5-year, and 7-year overall survival were 96.4%, 69.3%, and 50.4% for the former versus 87.1%, 41.8%, and 32.6% for the latter (P = 0.001).
Conclusions: The clinical outcome of completely cytoreduced patients was significantly better for PDS group than for IDS group, and therefore, the achievement of no gross RD after surgery seemed to have a different prognostic relevance for the 2 groups.