Survival Advantage of Lymphadenectomy in Patients with Ovarian Cancer

Abstract

We investigated the survival effect of lymphadenectomy in ovarian cancer. The five-year progression-free and overall survival in early-stage ovarian cancer were not affected. Preliminary, unadjusted analysis in advanced ovarian cancer suggested an improvement in survival. However, after adjusting for other factors, e.g. ECOG performance status and patients’ age, this survival advantage vanished. Our analysis suggests that systemic pelvic and para-aortic lymphadenectomy was not associated with an improvement of the progression-free and overall survival of patients with optimally debulked ovarian cancer.

Keywords:

• Ovarian cancer
• lymphadenectomy
• early stage
• debulked

Research involving human participants and animals

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study before treatment. According to the statements of Research and Ethical Committee, Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany, an additional informed consent for this study was not needed.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.