This report from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute examines the pathological characteristics and survival rates in women from six different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Of the 38,012 women with epithelial ovarian cancer in the SEER registries for the years 1973-1997, 33,619 were classified as white, 1157 as Hispanic, 2103 as African American, 364 as Chinese, 477 as Japanese, and 292 as Filipino. Asian and Hispanic women tended to be younger at diagnosis than other groups, but they represented populations in which the total age distribution is younger than that of other American women. Localized disease was more frequent and undifferentiated/unclassified disease was less frequent in Japanese and Filipino women. In addition, Filipino patients had more mucinous and fewer serous tumors than other groups. Older women and women with more advanced, clear-cell, and undifferentiated/unclassified cancers had the poorest survival. Patients with mucinous tumors had better survival than those with serous disease. The survival rates were higher in Hispanic and Filipino women than in white women with comparable disease and poorer in African American women. This difference between white and African American patients was most pronounced in older women aged 50 to 69 years. The probabilities of dying from invasive epithelial ovarian cancer by stage of disease were estimated using Cox partial likelihood analysis and Poisson regression methods with adjustments for age at diagnosis, race/ethnicity, and histology. The probability of dying of disease for women with localized disease was 3.3% at 2.5 years, 2.1% at 5 years, and 2.4% at 10 years from diagnosis, assuming survival to the previous time since diagnosis. The comparable risks for patients with regional disease were 11.9%, 7.6%, and 6.9%, respectively. The probabilities decreased dramatically in women with distant metastases from 31.3% at 2.5 years, to 17.3% at 5 years, and 8.6% at 10 years. For all women with distant disease, the probability of dying from disease within the first 5 years from diagnosis was 48.6%. This probability dropped to 8.6% in the next 5 years for those who survived the first 5 years from diagnosis. The pattern was similar for women with regional disease.