Introduction Complete-staging surgery is recommended for stage IA ovarian cancer (OC), but may be omitted for various reasons, including the preservation of fertility and an advanced age. We herein investigated the prognostic impact of limited-staging surgery in patients with stage IA epithelial OC.

Methods We retrospectively collected data on 4,730 patients with malignant ovarian tumors from the databases of multiple institutions and ultimately included 293 with stage IA epithelial OC. Limited-staging surgery was defined as one that did not involve hysterectomy, systematic retroperitoneal lymphadenectomy, or the collection of ascites cytology. We used an inverse probability of treatment weighting analysis with propensity scores and estimated the hazard ratios of recurrence and death with limited-staging surgery.

Results In total, 176 out of 293 patients (39.9%) were assigned to the limited-staging surgery group. After propensity score (PS) adjustments, no significant differences were observed in recurrence-free survival (RFS) or overall survival (OS) between the limited- and complete-staging surgery groups (P-value=0.651 and 0.469, respectively). Even in the subgroup analysis with age stratification, RFS and OS were similar in the limited- and complete-staging surgery groups.

Conclusion/Implications The present results indicate the limited prognostic impact of limited-staging surgery for stage IA epithelial OC.