Surgical second-look in epithelial ovarian cancer: High recurrence rate after negative results and lack of survival benefit limits its role in standard management

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the role of surgical second look (SSL) in epithelial ovarian cancer. Material and Methods: One hundred and seventy-one patients clinically free of disease were assessed retrospectively. Ninety-eight (57.3%) patients underwent SSL and 73 (42.7%) were observed. Fifty-one (52.0%) of the SSL operations were negative, 31 (31.6%) microscopically positive, and 16 (16.3%) macroscopically positive. Cytoreduction and/or chemotherapy were administered after positive SSL. Negative SSL and observation group patients were observed without treatment until recurrence was detected. Disease free survival (DFS), overall survival (OS) and clinical characteristics of groups were compared. Results: While DFS and OS of negative SSL group were better than the observation, microscopic and macroscopic positive SSL groups (p.05). However, DFS and OS of the microscopic positive SSL group were significantly longer than the macroscopic positive SSL group (p