Objective. The aim of this retrospective multicenter study was to assess whether the pre- chemotherapy hemoglobin levels have any impact on the clinical outcome of patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer who received a first- line taxane/platinum- based regimen. Methods. The study was conducted on 315 patients who underwent initial surgery followed by taxane/- platinum- based chemotherapy for FIGO stage IIc- IV epithelial ovarian cancer. All the patients had ECOG performance status 0- 1 at presentation. The median follow- up of survivors was 36 months (range, 6- 120 months). Results. The 25% , 50% , and 75% quantiles of hemoglobin levels before starting first line chemotherapy were 10.2, 11.4, and 12.3 g/dl, respectively. Residual disease after initial surgery (>1cmversus ≤ 1cm, P = 0.0013) was the only independent prognostic variable for overall survival. Conversely, hemoglobin levels (12.3 g/dl)were inversely related to overall survival at univariate (P = 0.03) but not at multivariate analysis. Conclusions. This investigation showed that hemoglobin levels before starting first- line taxane/platinum- based chemotherapy are not an independent prognostic factor for overall survival in patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer.
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