The effect of bowel resection on survival in advanced epithelial ovarian cancer

Objective. FIGO stage III ovarian cancer is further categorized according to the size of tumor, but not according to the organs affected. In this study we evaluated the outcome of patients with and without macroscopic bowel involvement in stage III ovarian cancer. Methods. This retrospective study analyzed the outcome of 194 ovarian cancer patients with FIGO III with and without bowel involvement who were operated on in our institution between 1985 and 1994. Results. The study demonstrated that maximum tumor reduction without remaining macroscopic cancer offered the best overall survival times in FIGO III ovarian cancer patients. However, whenever the bowel was involved, even maximum bowel resections did not prolong survival compared to patients with remaining tumor after surgery. Conclusions. This retrospective study demonstrated that bowel involvement in ovarian cancer had a bad prognosis and that survival in these patients could not substantially be prolonged when the affected parts of bowel were resected. To further substantiate these findings, future studies on advanced ovarian cancer should differentiate between patients with and without bowel involvement.