Trends in surgical complexity and treatment modalities utilized in the management of ovarian cancer in an era of neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Objectives: To investigate the impact of the increased use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy on the complexity of cytoreductive surgeries for ovarian cancer. Methods: Using the National Cancer Database, we performed a retrospective cohort study of women diagnosed between 2004 and 2015 with stage III or IV epithelial ovarian cancer who underwent either primary cytoreductive surgery (PDS) followed by adjuvant chemotherapy, neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) followed by interval debulking surgery. Cases were assigned a surgical complexity category as 1) Inadequate, 2) Low, 3) Moderate and, 4) High complexity. The primary outcome was the trend in surgical complexity over time. Secondary outcomes included temporal trends in treatment modality, perioperative mortality, and survival. Results: At total of 52,582 (76.3%) underwent PDS and 16,307 (23.7%) underwent NACT. The utilization of NACT increased from 7.7% in 2004 to 27.8% in 2015 (p-trend < 0.001). Patients undergoing moderate complexity surgeries increased from 28.9% to 33.5% and high complexity surgeries from 26.3% to 30% (p-trend < 0.001, for both). Trends in increasing surgical complexity were seen in both NACT and PDS cohorts. This increase in surgical complexity was seen most profoundly at the high-volume centers. Overall 30-day mortality decreased from 3.4% in 2004 to 1.4% in 2015; and 90-day mortality decreased from 7.6% to 4%. During the same time, 5-year survival increased from 39.7% to 49%. Conclusions: Increase in the utilization of NACT is associated with decreased 30- and 90-day mortality and increase in five-year survival. Moreover, the overall complexity of ovarian cancer surgery has increased in both PDS and NACT cohorts. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.