Luigi Frigerio

Eur. J. Gynaec. Oncol. Vol XXII, suppl. p.80, 2001.
(In coll  con G. Mangili, F. Zanetto, M. Carnelli, I. Sassi, R. Vigano, E. Rabaiotti)
We analyzed clinical data from 46 consecutive patients with advanced ovarian cancer optimally debulked
(residual tumor <1cm) after surgery. Median follow up was 53.5 months. In tumor specimens the expression of p53 was determined by immunohistochemical analysis. All patients received platinum-based chemotherapy; in 43.5% of cases Paclitaxel was added to chemotherapy regimen. 52.2% of patients are alive without evidence of disease, 32.6% died of disease. 54.4% relapsed. Median overall survival was 35.5 months.Median disease-free survival was 18.5 months. P53 overexpression was detected in 74% of patients. P53 overexpression did not have any impact on overall survival and disease-free surviva l(p>0.05). We observed a significant difference in disease-free survival between p53 positive patients treated with paclitaxel and p53 positive patients treated with platinum regimens not including Paclitaxel (23% of relapses versus 71%: p=0.02) The other factor  that proved  the correlation with disease free survival was ploidy (28.57% of relapses in diploid tumors versus 57.14% in aneuploid tumors (p=0.02)