Clinical significance for combined coagulation indexes in epithelial ovarian cancer prognosis

BACKGROUND: Increasing evidence supported an association between cancer and coagulation system. We aimed to identify prognostic values of coagulation biomarkers in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted on patients who underwent optimal tumor debulking followed by platinum-based chemotherapy at our institution. The predictive value of coagulation variables was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Through Cox hazards regression models, prognostic factors were determined for recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). Survival curves were visualized by Kaplan–Meier method and compared through Log-rank analysis. RESULTS: We involved 482 EOC patients and followed up for 64 (range, 36–87) months. According to ROC curves, D-dimer and International normalized ratio (INR) had superior predictive value than other coagulation indexes, with area under curve (AUC) of 0.758 and 0.742. Patients were then stratified into three combined D-dimer and INR (DD-INR) groups based on the cut-off value of 0.97 mg/L and 0.86, respectively. Through regression analysis, we demonstrated that age (HR 1.273; 95%CI 1.048–2.047; p = 0.045), pathological grade (HR 1.419; 95% CI 1.102–2.491; p = 0.032), clinical stage (HR 2.038; 95%CI 1.284–3.768; p = 0.008), CA-125 (HR 1.426; 95%CI 1.103–1.894; p = 0.038) and DD-INR (HR 2.412; 95%CI 1.683–3.241; p = 0.009) were independent prognostic factors. Survival analysis showed that patients with higher DD-INR experienced poor survival (p = 0.0013 for RFS and p = 0.0068 for OS). Further subgroup analysis revealed that evaluated DD-INR was significantly associated with poor survival among patients with advanced stage (p = 0.0028 for RFS and p = 0.0180 for OS). CONCLUSION: Our findings suggested that coagulation indexes, especially the combined DD-INR were promising biomarkers for prognosis stratification in EOC patients, especially those with advanced clinical stages.