Histopathology predicts clinical outcome in advanced epithelial ovarian cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and debulking surgery

Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy does not increase the rate of complete resection and does not significantly reduce the morbidity of Visceral–Peritoneal Debulking (VPD) in patients with stage IIIC–IV ovarian cancer

“…However, similarly to our study, complete responders to chemotherapy represent a small group of patients, usually 15% if measuring clinical response and 5% if measuring histo-pathologic response [49,50]. The vast majority of the patients, over 85%, will show partial response or stable disease on neo-adjuvant chemotherapy [49,50]. Possibly compensating this selection bias with regards to the complexity and morbidity of the surgery in group 2, our protocol, as the EORTC trial [6], also excluded from surgery a similar number of patients with progressive disease on chemotherapy.…”

“…They clearly had less complex surgery and lower morbidity than the patients who had VPD. However, similarly to our study, complete responders to chemotherapy represent a small group of patients, usually 15% if measuring clinical response and 5% if measuring histo-pathologic response [49,50]. The vast majority of the patients, over 85%, will show partial response or stable disease on neo-adjuvant chemotherapy [49,50].…”

Data set for reporting of ovary, fallopian tube and primary peritoneal carcinoma: recommendations from the International Collaboration on Cancer Reporting (ICCR)

“…[115][116][117][118] A more recent study has tested and validated the prognostic significance of response criteria and assessed reproducibility in two independent series of high-grade pelvic serous carcinoma. 118,119 The latter study suggests that a three-tier scoring system (the Chemotherapy Response Score (CRS)) is most reproducible and that the system is simple and easy for all pathologists to apply, irrespective of their level of experience in gynaecological pathology.…”

Chemotherapy Response Score: Development and Validation of a System to Quantify Histopathologic Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Tubo-Ovarian High-Grade Serous Carcinoma

“…Multiple research studies have attempted to quantify residual tumor and/or chemotherapy-induced regressive changes and correlate them with patient outcome. [10][11][12][13] Each one used different criteria, none have been independently validated, and none have been widely adopted in routine clinical practice.…”