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New York City—A new retrospective study suggests that women who receive a blood transfusion during surgery for advanced ovarian cancer experience a shorter time to recurrence of tumors. Similar associations have been found in other malignancies, but the new work is the first to indicate such a connection with ovarian cancer.
“This is the most lethal cancer in women, so it might have huge implications,” stated the study’s lead investigator Gildasio S. De Oliveira Jr., MD, teacher in anesthesiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago. “Even if you gain four months in those women, it is a huge deal.”
Of the total cohort, 71 patients received perioperative blood transfusion and 72 did not. There were no differences between the two groups with regard to both patient and procedural characteristics. The median time to tumor recurrence was 13 months in the transfusion group and 24 months in the women who did not receive blood (P=0.01).


Blood Transfusion Speeds Recurrence of Ovarian Cancer | MedHours.com