Study will test frailty tools to choose ovarian cancer surgery patients

Complete macroscopic surgical resection (CMR) requires extensive surgery and combined with chemotherapy confers best chance of survival in advanced ovarian cancer. During cytoreductive surgery 11% of women require a temporary diverting intestinal stoma.

Unexpectedly, our results from a unique fully accounted for population demonstrate that survival was not improved when increasing the proportion of women in whom CMR was achieved and in a yet unidentified subgroup of women extensive surgery was detrimental. In these women surgical treatment should be omitted in favor of chemotherapy only. Accordingly, there is an imperative need to improve patient selection to surgical treatment.

In Sweden, we treat an unselected population of women in a public healthcare system, where 30% of women with are >75 years. Despite these circumstances guidelines on patient-selection are lacking.

Age is an imprecise variable to base clinical decisions on but must be considered with an aging population. The dynamics between physiological changes of aging, comorbidity and medical condition are included in the concept of frailty, that has gained little attention in oncology, despite their potential to stratify risk and mortality.

The FOLERO study is a prospective adequately powered national cohort study with aim to determine if frailty instruments may be used to select patient to surgical treatment. In addition, we test the feasibility of early stoma reversal after index cytoreductive surgery in a small phase I trial and follow our patients Health Related Quality of Life after state of the art surgical treatment.