Moderate progress for ovarian cancer in the last 20 years: prolongation of survival, but no improvement in the cure rate.

Although ovarian cancer treatment has advanced in the last 20 years, long-term survival remains stable. The purpose of this study was to determine whether survival has improved in line with treatment advances in a population-based prospective cohort of ovarian cancer patients (1978-1997, with a follow-up through to 2000). The 10-year overall survival rate for cancer patients was similar before and after 1988: 32.2% (n=1661) and 34.4% (n=2089). For patients after 1988, a 12-month prolongation of median survival was observed. In terms of stage according to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), only FIGO I and FIGO II patients showed, in addition to a prolongation in survival, an absolute improvement of 12.9 and 12.6% after 5 years and of 13.2 and 8.6% after 10 years. This hardly affected the survival of the total sample. For the most frequent stage FIGO III patients and for FIGO IV patients, a prolongation in survival time, but no improvement in survival rate, was seen after five or 10 years. The progress in FIGO I and II patients may be due to more accurate staging. More effective chemotherapy may also explain some of the improvement. The prolongation in FIGO-stages III-IV may be due to more radical surgery. Patient selection criteria, not only the treatment modalities, may be responsible for the superior results reported in clinical trials. Cancer registries are important for evaluating the quality of healthcare delivery.