Effectiveness of platinum-based chemotherapy among elderly patients with advanced ovarian cancer

Abstract

Background. Platinum-based chemotherapy is the standard of care for women with advanced ovarian cancer based on the results of randomized trials. We previously showed that only about half of women over the age of 65 years with this disease received platinum-based chemotherapy, and that the likelihood of receiving it decreases with age. Methods. We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database to identify women diagnosed from 1/1/92 to 12/31/96 with stage III or IV ovarian cancer who survived ≥120 days beyond diagnosis, and were ≥65 years of age. Cox proportional hazards models and propensity scores were used to control for known predictors of receiving treatme..