Natural history and outcome of mucinous carcinoma of the ovary.

OBJECTIVE We performed a population-based analysis to compare the clinical characteristics of women with mucinous tumors with women with other epithelial tumors. STUDY DESIGN The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database was queried to identify all women with epithelial ovarian cancer diagnosed from 1988 to 2007. The natural history, clinical characteristics, and survival of women with serous tumors were compared with women with mucinous carcinomas. RESULTS A total of 40,571 women including 4811 with mucinous carcinomas (11.9%) were identified. Among women with stage I neoplasms, the presence of mucinous histology had no effect on either cancer-specific survival (hazard ratio, 0.87; 95% confidence interval, 0.74-1.04). Survival was inferior in patients with advanced-stage mucinous compared with serous tumors. The hazard ratio for cancer-specific survival for women with stage III mucinous tumors was 1.55 (95% confidence interval, 1.43-1.96). CONCLUSION Although survival for early-stage mucinous and serous tumors is similar, survival for advanced-stage mucinous neoplasms is inferior to that of serous carcinomas.