What Characterizes Long-term Survivors of Recurrent Ovarian Cancer? Case Report and Review of the Literature

Abstract

Background: Women with recurrent ovarian cancer have a poor prognosis and short survival. However, some women are long-term survivors and it is unclear whether they share specific common characteristics.

Case report: We present the case of a 63-year-old woman with histologically-proven recurrent ovarian cancer and a survival time of 16 years after the diagnosis of recurrence. She underwent initial debulking surgery in 1994, followed by 6 cycles of adjuvant chemotherapy with cisplatin and paclitaxel. After recurrent disease was diagnosed by re-laparotomy in 2000, she underwent four lines of systemic chemotherapy from 2000 to 2009 (carboplatin/paclitaxel, topotecan, etoposide/treosulfan and liposomal doxorubicin) and four lines of endocrine therapy between 2002 and 2014 (tamoxifen, goserelin, tamoxifen and exemestane). In 2014, she underwent secondary debulking surgery and was tumor-free until 2015. Upon progression, she was then started on the fifth-line of endocrine therapy, fulvestrant, which was changed to the mTOR inhibitor everolimus in June 2016. In a PUBMED literature search, 360 cases of long-term survivors of recurrent ovarian cancer (LTSROC), defined as women with survival >5 years after the diagnosis of recurrence, were identified with a mean post-recurrence survival time of 7.5 years. Comparing the patient and therapy details of these women, we identified common characteristics of LTSROC, i.e. young age and optimal debulking at initial surgery, a long time span between first-line therapy and first recurrence and the combined use of optimal cytoreductive surgery and systemic chemotherapy.

Conclusion: LTSROC are rare, with 360 cases described in the literature. LTSROC are characterized by young age, low tumor stage, long recurrence-free interval and combined modality treatment with optimal cytoreductive surgery and systemic chemotherapy.

Keywords: Ovarian cancer; chemotherapy; long-term survivor; recurrence; therapy response.