Secondary cytoreductive surgery in epithelial ovarian cancer: nonresponders to first-line therapy.

Thirty-three patients with progressive or stable epithelial ovarian cancer who underwent secondary tumor-reductive surgery at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center were retrospectively studied. All patients had primary cytoreductive surgery followed by chemotherapy. Lack of response to chemotherapy was clinically documented preoperatively. The tumors of 55% of the patients were secondarily cytoreduced to a greatest diameter of less than 2 cm. Sixty-six percent of the patients required bowel resection. Operative morbidity occurred in 24% of patients, mostly in those with bowel resection. Overall, median survival after secondary surgery was 9.4 months. For patients with residual tumor less than 1 cm, median survival after secondary surgery was 19.5 months, compared with 8.3 months for patients with residual tumor of 1 cm or more (P less than 0.004). Patients with an interval between primary cytoreductive effort and secondary surgery of less than 12 months survived a median of 7.3 months, compared with an 18.3-month median survival for patients with an interval of 12 months or more (P less than 0.004). The present study provided no evidence that secondary surgery is of significant benefit in most patients who have progressive disease during chemotherapeutic treatment of epithelial ovarian cancer.