Minimally Invasive Surgery and Laparotomy Yield Similar OS in Ovarian Cancer

Data indicate that there is no notable difference in survival when using minimally invasive surgery for interval debulking vs laparotomy in patients with advanced ovarian cancer, according to Kirsten Jorgensen, MD.

In an interview with CancerNetwork® during The Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2023 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer, Jorgensen, a fellow at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, also detailed that despite undergoing more extensive surgery, laparotomy did not provide an additional mortality benefit and that the minimally invasive group was discharged from the hospital faster with a shorter treatment interval.

Moreover, mortality was lower in the minimally invasive group vs the laparotomy group at the 30- and 90-day time points.

Transcript:

The major finding was that there was no worse overall survival for minimally invasive surgery when compared with laparotomy. This also included no worse overall survival at the 5-year estimated overall survival and the overall analysis.

Additionally, we did find that for the laparotomy group, there was more extensive surgery, but this didn’t come with any added mortality benefit. They [also] had higher rates of residual disease. Similar to prior studies, we also found that the minimally invasive group got out of the hospital faster and had shorter treatment time in the hospital.

We did find that there was lower mortality at the 30- and 90-day mark in the minimally invasive group. However, this was a rare outcome overall in both of our groups. Similarly, both groups had low rates of readmission. We were unable to measure complications from surgery directly due to the limitations of the dataset. We are hopeful that this is an avenue for future research, especially prospective research.

Reference

Jorgensen K, Wu FC, Nitecki R, et al. Laparotomy vs minimally invasive surgery for interval debulking surgery among patients with advanced ovarian cancer. Presented at: 2023 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer; March 25-28; Tampa, Florida.