Patients with stage IA ovarian clear cell carcinoma do not require chemotherapy following surgery

BACKGROUND: Ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC) is an infrequent histological subtype of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). The present study aimed to investigate whether chemotherapy is indispensable for patients with stage IA OCCC. METHODS: Data were collected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database between 2004 and 2015. All subjects were diagnosed with stage IA OCCC, according to their postoperative pathological reports. In the present study, 1038 patients were retrospectively investigated, among whom 692 patients received chemotherapy. Propensity score matching (PSM) was performed to prevent selection bias. The multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyze the correlation between variables and 5‐year overall survival. RESULTS: An equal number of patients (n = 346) who did or did not undergo chemotherapy after PSM were further enrolled in the study. The results showed that the mortality of OCCC increased for the patients aged ≥50 years. In addition, older age was associated with lower 5‐year overall survival (p < 0.05). However, chemotherapy did not extend the 5‐year overall survival (p = 0.524) of patients with stage IA OCCC, according to the multivariate Cox regression analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Chemotherapy did not affect the overall survival of patients with stage IA OCCC following surgery.