Prognostic impact of adjuvant chemotherapy treatment intensity for ovarian cancer

Objective We aimed to investigate the prognostic impact of duration of first-line chemotherapy administration in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Methods Chemotherapy records were abstracted from the electronic medical record. Patients with on-time completion (105 days) were compared to patients finishing early (<105 days), delays of 1–4 weeks, or >4 weeks. For 222 women with stage IIIC/IV, stage-stratified estimates of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were compared. A delay sub-study was performed with outliers removed. Each week of delay was correlated with the change in PFS and OS to identify time points associated with change in outcome. Results Most women had on-time completion of chemotherapy (23.6%) or a treatment delay of 4 weeks (21.8%); 21.6% of women experienced a delay longer than 4 weeks. R0 resection at initial debulking (OR = 1.99, 95%CI: 1.18–3.36, p = 0.010) and RECIST complete response (OR = 4.88, 95%CI: 2.47–10.63, p<0.001) were strongly associated with on-time completion. Patients with on-time completion and < 1 month delay had similar median survivals of 43.1 months (lower 95% CI bound 33.7 months) and 44.5 months (lower bound 37.0, p = 0.93). Women with >1 month delay had decreased median survival of 18.1 months (14.7–24.9 months), while women with short intervals survived 35.0 months (95%CI: 21.8–49.8 months). Short-term delays lead to progressively decreasing OS. This was significantly different from the on-schedule survival estimate after 6 weeks of delay. Conclusions On-time completion of chemotherapy correlates with increased survival and higher complete response rates. Increasing delays in chemotherapy completion were associated with decreased survival.