Being treated in higher volume hospitals leads to longer progression-free survival for epithelial ovarian carcinoma patients in the Rhone-Alpes region of France

BACKGROUND: To investigate the relationship between hospital volume activities and the survival for Epithelial Ovarian Carcinoma (EOC) patients in France. METHODS: This retrospective study using prospectively implemented databases was conducted on an exhaustive cohort of 267 patients undergoing first-line therapy during 2012 in the Rhone-Alpes Region of France. We compared Progression-Free Survival for Epithelial Ovarian Carcinoma patients receiving first-line therapy in high- (i.e. ≥ 12 cases/year) vs. low-volume hospitals. To control for selection bias, multivariate analysis and propensity scores were used. An adjusted Kaplan-Meier estimator and a univariate Cox model weighted by the propensity score were applied. RESULTS: Patients treated in the low-volume hospitals had a probability of relapse (including death) that was almost two times (i.e. 1.94) higher than for patients treated in the high-volume hospitals (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: To our knowledge, this is the first study conducted in this setting in France. As reported in other countries, there was a significant positive association between greater volume of hospital care for EOC and patient survival. Other factors may also be important such as the quality of the surgical resection. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-017-2802-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.