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BACKGROUND: There is plenty of evidence that survival time associated with advanced ovarian cancer is predominantly related to the amount of residual tumor after primary operation. However, there are only few and inconclusive reports concerning the effect of second debulking procedures on survival time after relapse. METHODS: To evaluate the effect of radical second operation, 30 patients with clinically diagnosed relapses had second operations after a median recurrence-free interval of 16 months. Considerable efforts were made to resect all tumor tissue. Complete resection was achieved in 14 of 39 (47%) patients, and residual tumors smaller than 2 cm remained in 12 (40%) patients. In 19 (63%) patients, intestinal resections were necessary. Operation time, blood units needed, hospital stay, and complication rates were comparable to those associated with primary debulking procedures. RESULTS: Survival time after second operation was closely correlated with the residual tumor remaining after second surgical procedure and also with the length of the recurrence-free interval. Patients with complete resections had significantly longer survival times than those with residual tumors of less than 2 cm (median, 29 months versus 9 months; P = 0.004). Patients with a recurrence-free interval of more than 12 months had a longer survival time than those with a shorter disease-free time (median, 29 months versus 8 months; P = 0.002). Postoperative treatment also was shown to influence survival time, whereas grade of the tumor (P = 0.74), age of the patient (P = 0.87), and initial FIGO stage (P = 0.58) had no influence on survival time after second operation. Multivariate analysis (Cox regression) revealed that residual tumor after second surgical procedure (relative risk, 4.7) was the most important independent variable predicting survival time after second surgical procedure. Recurrence-free interval (relative risk, 2.7) and postoperative (second-line) treatment (relative risk, 3.0) were equally potent variables. Residual tumor after primary operation, was almost significant (P = 0.06) in the univariate analysis, but was canceled in the multivariate setting by the recurrence-free interval. Again, FIGO stage, grade of the tumor, and patient age had no predictive value. CONCLUSIONS: The authors conclude that radical surgical procedure can prolong survival times in patients with recurrent ovarian cancer. Patients who had a complete resection of cancer tissue in the primary operation or those who experienced a disease-free interval of more than 12 months after primary operation are most likely to benefit from second operation in recurrent ovarian cancer. Radical surgical procedure should be offered to these patients to enhance efficacy of second-line chemotherapy, which is of limited value in bulky recurrent disease.
Jänicke et al. (Thu,) studied this question.