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. 2020 Mar 6;301(4):1027–1035. doi: 10.1007/s00404-020-05477-7

Table 7.

Prevalence and prognostic relevance of circulating and disseminated tumor cells at time of diagnosis in patients with ovarian, fallopian tube and peritoneal cancer

Study Tumor entity Target cells / Assay Positivity rate Prognostic relevance
Our study Primary and relapsed ovarian, fallopian tube and peritoneal cancer

CTCs

CellSearch

26% (17% in primary, 25% in relapsed cancer) OS, PFSa,b
Fehm, Banys et al. 2013 [6] Primary ovarian cancer

DTCs

ICC

27% OS, PFSb
Poveda et al. 2011 [7] Relapsed ovarian cancer

CTCs

CellSearch

14% (defined as ≥ 2 CTCs per 10 ml blood) OS, PFS
Banys et al. [5]c Primary ovarian cancer

DTCs

ICC

25% DFS
Zhang et al. [22] Primary ovarian cancer

CTCs

Immunobeads, Multiplex-RT-PCR

90% OS shorter in patients with EpCAM-positive CTCs
Braun et al. [12]c Primary ovarian cancer

DTCs

ICC

30% DFS, DDFSb, OS
Marth et al. 2002 [10] Primary ovarian cancer

CTCs

Immunobeads

12% n.s

DTCs

Immunobeads

21% n.s
Schindlbeck et al. [11] Primary ovarian cancer

DTCs

ICC

23% DDFS
Aktas et al. 2011 [9] Primary ovarian cancer

CTCs

Multiplex-RT-PCR (AdnaTest)

19% OS

DTCs

ICC

35% n.s
Chebouti et al. [13] Primary ovarian cancer

DTCs

ICC

42% OS
Fan et al. [18] Primary ovarian cancer

CTCs

Immunofluorescence and cell invasion assay

61% DFS
Sehouli et al. [19] Primary ovarian cancer

CTCs

ICC

n.a n.s

CTCs circulating tumor cells, DDFS distant disease-free survival, DFS disease-free survival, DTCs disseminated tumor cells, ICC immunocytochemistry, OS overall survival, n.s. not significant, PFS progression-free survival

aEntire cohort, statistical significance in subgroups not reached

bMultivariate analysis

cTthese cohorts were completely or partially included in the pooled analysis [6]