Surgical staging of early stage epithelial ovarian cancer: results from the CDC-NPCR ovarian patterns of care study.
OBJECTIVE
The objectives of this study were to determine the adequacy of surgical staging performed on surgically treated epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) patients with apparent early stage disease and to determine if receipt of surgical staging had an influence on survival.


METHODS
Detailed surgical staging information was collected from medical records for 721 patients diagnosed between 1998 and 2000 with EOC. Patients resided in California or New York and were identified through population-based cancer registries.


RESULTS
Nearly 90% of patients had removal of the omentum and evaluation of bowel serosa and mesentery but only 72% had assessment of retroperitoneal lymph nodes and the majority of patients did not receive biopsies of other peritoneal locations. Only lymph node assessment (as well as node assessment combined with washings and omentectomy) had a statistically significant association with improved survival. The 5-year survival for women with node sampling was 84.2% versus 69.6% for those without this surgical procedure, and patients who did not have lymph node assessment had nearly twice the risk of death as those who did. When patients were stratified by receipt of chemotherapy, lack of node sampling had an effect only on patients who also had no chemotherapy (adjusted HR=2.2, CI=1.0-4.5).


CONCLUSIONS
The results of this population-based study confirm the prognostic importance of surgical staging for women with EOC, and the important role of gynecologic oncologists in treating these patients. Adjuvant chemotherapy does not appear to further improve survival for those women who receive adequate surgical staging.
California Cancer Registry, Public Health Institute, Sacramento, CA, USA. rcress@ccr.ca.gov
Rosemary D
RD
Cress
Katrina
K
Bauer
Cynthia D
CD
O'Malley
Amy R
AR
Kahn
Maria J
MJ
Schymura
Jennifer M
JM
Wike
Sherri L
SL
Stewart
Gary S
GS
Leiserowitz
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002140:California / Q000453:epidemiology; D000077216:Carcinoma, Ovarian Epithelial; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D009375:Neoplasms, Glandular and Epithelial / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery; D009518:New York / Q000453:epidemiology; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'; D012042:Registries; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D015996:Survival Rate