Association between types of circulating tumor cell, its positive rate and the clinical features of ovarian carcinoma

Objective To explore the positive rate and types of circulating tumor cell (CTC) in peripheral blood of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer and its relationship with clinicopathological features. Methods A total of 31 epithelial ovarian cancer patients in Chinese PLA General Hospital from March 2015 to October 2016 were enrolled in this study. Venous blood samples were collected at different time points. The optimized CanPatrol CTC enrichment technique was used to detect the CTC in peripheral blood, and its relationship with the clinicopathological features was studied. Results The positive rate of CTC was 83.87% in 31 cases of epithelial ovarian cancer. The detection rate of CTC in patients with ascites and the residual lesion was signifcantly higher than those in patients without ascites and the residual lesion (P< 0.05), but no signifcant difference was shown in the detection rates of CTC in age, CA125 expression, blood transfusion, lymph node metastasis, chemotherapy and other clinicopathological features (P> 0.05). With the progress of postoperative chemotherapy, the total number of CTC, epithelial CTC, E-M mixed CTC and msenchymal CTC in patients gradually declined. Twelve patients were followed up for 6 months, 4 of them suffered recurrence and their CTC positive rate were 100%. Conclusion Positive expression of circulating tumor cells (CTC) indicates poor prognosis.