The national cancer data base report on ovarian cancer

Abstract

Background. Reports generated from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a joint project of the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer and the American Cancer Society, have described trends in demographics, stage, treatment patterns, and survival for a variety of cancers. In this report, the most current (1991) data for ovarian cancer are presented and include some comparisons with 1985/1986 data. Methods. Three calls for data from hospital registries across the United States have yielded 17,114 ovarian cancer cases for 1985, 1986, and 1991 combined. These data represent approximately 23%, 23%, and 43%, respectively, of the annual number of cases of ovarian cancer in the United States for those years. Results. One-fourth of the reported cases of ovarian cancer were diagnosed in women less than 50 years of age. Younger patients (Conclusions. A trend toward more complete surgery with full surgical/pathologic staging was observed in 1991, but there was not yet evidence to indicate significant improvements in ovarian cancer survival compared with published figures during the past 10-15 years. Important ethnic and demographic differences in type of surgery and survival were noted but could not be differentiated from differences in tumor stage. Cancer 1995;76:1096–1103.