Abstract: Background and purpose: At present, the treatment of elderly patients with ovarian cancer, especially advanced ovarian cancer, tends to be conservative, and elderly patients often can not receive standard treatment. There are few treatment experiences and research data. This study aimed to investigate the treatment outcome, survival and prognostic factors of elderly patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer. Methods: This study retrospectively analyzed the clinical data for women older than 65 years diagnosed with stage Ⅲ and Ⅳ epithelial ovarian cancer between Apr. 2008 to Dec. 2012 in Chongqing Cancer Hospital. Results: Of the 181 women who met study criteria, 8.8% received no treatment, 12.7% underwent surgery alone, 15.5% received chemotherapy alone, 33.2% underwent non-standard treatment, 29.8% underwent standard treatment. Baseline comparison of different treatment methods showed that the proportion of patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases was lower in the standard treatment group. After Correcting the effect of cardio-cerebrovascular diseases, the median survival time of standard treatment (48 months) and the median survival time of non-standard treatment (47 months) were significantly longer than that of the other treatment groups (P<0.001). The median survival time of chemotherapy alone (26 months) was significantly longer than that of the surgery alone and untreated group (P<0.001), while the median survival time of surgery alone was similar to untreated group (9 months vs 8 months, P=0.269). Multivariate analysis using Cox model showed that treatment, residual lesion size, cardio-cerebrovascular diseases significantly impacted on survival time. Conclusion: Standard treatment was still the key factor for the best survival of elderly women with advanced ovarian cancer. When this is not offered or possible, chemother-apy alone offers better survival than surgery alone. However, surgery alone does not improve prognosis.

Key words: Old age, Ovarian neoplasms, Prognosis, Chemotherapy