A study of clinicopathologic factors as indicators for early prediction of suboptimal debulking surgery after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in advanced ovarian cancer.

AIM: This study aimed to evaluate early clinicopathologic factors predicting gross residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer.

METHODS: We analyzed clinicopathologic data of 68 patients with ovarian cancer who were treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval debulking surgery (NAC-IDS) between March 2006 and December 2016. All the patients received three cycles of NAC followed IDS. We evaluated all possible clinicopathologic characteristics, including reduction rates of serum CA-125 after each NAC and seven initial abdominopelvic computed tomography (CT) findings related to disease severity.

RESULTS: After IDS, no gross residual disease was found in 46 (67.6%) patients and 22 (33.4%) patients had gross residual disease. Multivariate analysis identified that reduction rate of CA-125 after 2nd NAC, body mass index (BMI) and small bowel lesion in the initial CT findings were significantly associated with gross residual disease after IDS (P = 0.005, 0.030, 0.001, respectively). The optimal cutoff value predicting gross residual disease were less than 50% of CA-125 reduction rate after 2nd NAC and low BMI (<23 kg/m2 ). The combined receiver operating characteristic curve analysis of these factors showed good performance for predicting gross residual disease after IDS (area under the curve = 0.845).

CONCLUSION: A model using small bowel mesentery involvement on CT, BMI (<23 kg/m2 ) and less than 50% reduction of the initial CA-125 level after the 2nd NAC is highly predictive of gross residual disease after IDS in advanced ovarian cancer patients. These results may be helpful in further treatment planning and patients counseling.