Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has been proven highly effective for menopausal symptoms caused by radical surgery. However, the impact of postoperative HRT on the clinical outcomes of patients previously treated for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) remains unclear.

To determine whether postoperative HRT use has any positive or negative impacts on prognosis and recurrence among EOC survivors.

Studies that provided an assessment of postoperative HRT use and prognosis or recurrence in EOC patients were included for analysis. Two reviewers independently evaluated the eligibility of identified studies and abstracted the data. A fixed effects model was used to pool study-specific estimates of hazard ratios (HRs) or relative risks (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and four cohort studies included 419 EOC survivors who used HRT and 1029 non-users. The aggregated HR of overall survival (OS) suggested that HRT use after surgery for EOC had a favorable impact on OS (HR=0.69, 95% CI: 0.61-0.79), but when these studies were categorized into cohort study and RCT subgroups, not all of them demonstrated positive results (HR=0.63, 95% CI: 0.49-0.81 and HR=1.03, 95% CI: 0.58-1.83, respectively). The meta-analysis of EOC recurrence of three available studies demonstrated that postoperative HRT use was not associated with an increased risk of recurrence in EOC survivors (RR=0.83, 95% CI: 0.64-1.07). This pattern also emerged in the subgroup analysis for the stage and type of HRT.

In EOC patients, postoperative HRT does not have a negative effect on overall survival and tumor recurrence. However, well-designed and large-scale RCTs are needed to verify this relationship in the future.