Browsing by Author "Mende, Anna-Maria"

Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death among women in Europe; high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSC) is the most common subtype of ovarian cancer. This report describes the construction and preliminary analysis of a retrospective cohort of HGSC patients. Tissue samples were obtained from Helsinki Biobank, and clinical data was retrieved from several electronic data bases as well as from the paper archives of the HUS Women’s hospital. Over 900 patients were identified for potential inclusion in the cohort. The process of confirming diagnoses is still ongoing. Challenges with the collection and categorization of clinical data are reported and possible solutions discussed. As the confirmation of which patients will be included in the final cohort is not yet complete, analyses in this report are limited to some preliminary descriptions. These initial findings seem to be in concordance with other reports: patients with stage I or II disease and/or complete surgical cytoreduction (R0) have a better 5-year overall survival than those with stage III or IV disease and/or suboptimal surgical outcome. Once the cohort is ready, it will be a unique tool for studying the biology of high-grade ovarian carcinoma.