Introduction: In patients affected by epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) complete cytoreduction (CC) has been associated with higher survival outcomes. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have proved clinical benefice in different areas of healthcare.
Objective: To systematically assemble and analyze the available literature on the use of AI in patients affected by EOC to evaluate its applicability to predict CC compared to traditional statistics.
Material and methods: Data search was carried out through PubMed, Scopus, Ovid MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, international congresses and clinical trials. The main search terms were: Artificial Intelligence AND surgery/cytoreduction AND ovarian cancer. Two authors independently performed the search by October 2022 and evaluated the eligibility criteria. Studies were included when data about Artificial Intelligence and methodological data were detailed.
Results: A total of 1899 cases were analyzed. Survival data were reported in 2 articles: 92% of 5-years overall survival (OS) and 73% of 2-years OS. The median area under the curve (AUC) resulted 0,62. The model accuracy for surgical resection reported in two articles reported was 77,7% and 65,8% respectively while the median AUC was 0,81. On average 8 variables were inserted in the algorithms. The most used parameters were age and Ca125.
Discussion: AI revealed greater accuracy compared against the logistic regression models data. Survival predictive accuracy and AUC were lower for advanced ovarian cancers. One study analyzed the importance of factors predicting CC in recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer and disease free interval, retroperitoneal recurrence, residual disease at primary surgery and stage represented the main influencing factors. Surgical Complexity Scores resulted to be more useful in the algorithms than pre-operating imaging.
Conclusion: AI showed better prognostic accuracy if compared to conventional algorithms. However further studies are needed to compare the impact of different AI methods and variables and to provide survival informations.
Keywords: algorithm; artificial intelligence; cytoreduction; epithelial ovarian cancer; surgery.