Retrospective Study of Ovarian Cancer Patients With Brain Metastasis

Ovarian cancer, especially epithelial ovarian carcinoma, has the highest mortality rate among the gynecologic malignancies. The majority of patients with epithelial ovarian carcinoma are diagnosed at advanced stage which has the overall survival rates of only 19-30%. As the advance in the managements which prolonged the overall survival, metastatic lesion in rare location such as brain was noted in few patients of ovarian cancer in recent years. In the retrospective study, the investigators will review the medical records of the ovarian cancer patients with brain metastasis in the investigators hospital to investigate the incidence, clinical courses, optimal managements and possible prognostic factors in the rare condition.

The ovarian cancer patient treated at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the National Taiwan University Hospital were retrospectively collected. The cancer registration database was searched for the patients with ovarian carcinoma who brain metastases were also diagnosed. The medical records of these patients were reviewed with particular attention to the results of histo-pathological and radiologic reports. Patients with other synchronous primary brain tumor were excluded. The initial management of primary tumor, including the surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy, and the clinical courses and disease status, such as remission, recurrence and progression, were all carefully reviewed. The intra-cranial lesions were all diagnosed by imaging studies, including brain computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Therapeutic strategies for the metastatic lesions in the brain were also reviewed. All statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS 13.0 statistical software for Windows. P\<0.05 was defined as statistical significance. Survival was measured from the time of initial diagnosis of brain metastasis until the date of death or last contact, and was presented by Kaplan-Meier curves.