Malignant Bowel Obstruction in Patients With Recurrent Ovarian Cancer

Abstract

We sought to report incidence, risk factors, and survival related to bowel obstruction in 311 ovarian cancer patients with recurrent disease. A total of 68 (22%) had a documented bowel obstruction during their cancer course, and 49 (16%) developed it after cancer recurrence. Surprisingly, 142 (45%) fit into an "unknown" category (3+ months of data lacking from last contact/death). No risk factors were identified; management included surgery (n = 21), conservative measures (n = 21), and other (n = 7). Documented bowel obstruction was not associated with a statistically significant reduction in survival after cancer recurrence. In conclusion, although bowel obstruction occurs in only a subgroup of patients with ovarian cancer and does not appear to detract from survival after cancer recurrence, limited end-of-life information may be resulting in an underestimation of incidence.

Keywords: bowel obstruction; end of life; morbidity; ovarian cancer.

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

© The Author(s) 2014.

Figures

Figure 1

In patients who did (lower line) and did not (upper line) develop a documented bowel obstruction after cancer recurrence, the median survival from the time of recurrent cancer was 2.1 and 3 years, respectively (P = .12).