Safety of ovarian preservation in premenopausal women with endometrial cancer.

PURPOSE: Oophorectomy is commonly performed in premenopausal women with endometrial cancer who undergo hysterectomy. The benefits of oophorectomy in this setting are unknown, and the procedure subjects women to the long-term sequelae of estrogen deprivation. We examined the safety of ovarian preservation in young women with endometrial cancer who underwent hysterectomy.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Women < or = 45 years of age with stage I endometrial cancer recorded from 1988 to 2004 in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Database were examined. We developed Cox proportional hazards models and Kaplan-Meier curves to compare women who underwent oophorectomy with those who had ovarian preservation.

RESULTS: A total of 3,269 women, including 402 patients (12%) who had ovarian preservation, were identified. Younger age (P < .0001), later year of diagnosis (P = .04), residence in the eastern United States (P = .02), and low tumor grade (P < .0001) were associated with ovarian preservation. In a multivariate Cox model, ovarian preservation had no effect on either cancer-specific (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.58; 95% CI, 0.14 to 2.44) or overall (HR = 0.68; 95% CI, 0.34 to 1.35) survival. The findings were unchanged when women who received pelvic radiotherapy were excluded.

CONCLUSION: Ovarian preservation in premenopausal women with early-stage endometrial cancer may be safe and not associated with an increase in cancer-related mortality.