Clinical significance and predicting indicators of post-cancer-treatment survival in terminally ill patients with ovarian cancer

Aim: Women with ovarian cancer (OC) often experience relapse and receive further repetitive chemotherapy. The objective of this study was to overview the remaining survival time after the final chemotherapy and to examine influential clinicopathologic indicators in those patients.

Methods: The medical charts of deceased OC patients who had died of the disease between 2003 and 2012 were retrospectively reviewed. We investigated post-cancer-treatment survival (PCS) defined as the interval between the date of the final chemotherapy and death.

Results: In all, 77 patients were enrolled. Three patients (3.9%) had received chemotherapy in the last 2 weeks. Eight (10.4%), 28 (36.4%), and 44 (57.2%) patients had received chemotherapy in the last 30, 60, and 90 days, respectively. There were no differences in either survival after recurrence or overall survival between the shorter (<75 days) and longer (≥75 days) PCS groups. On the other hand, patients in the shorter PCS group had significantly fewer chances of referral to a hospice or home-care than those in the latter group (P = 0.035). In multivariable analysis, a poorer performance status, an elevated white blood cell count, and a higher C-reactive protein value were significantly correlated with a shorter PCS (P = 0.004, 0.006 and 0.027, respectively).

Conclusion: Half of the patients received chemotherapy within 75 days of death and we did not identify any survival benefit in patients who received chemotherapy near the end of life. We should provide information to patients about their prognosis and discuss the timing of withdrawal from chemotherapy from the early stage of their recurrence.