Lymph node involvement in clinically apparent early ovarian cancer: a prospective study.

PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to identify the lymph node involvement in apparently early ovarian cancer (OC) Materials and

Methods

Patients with clinically apparent early OC who underwent staging surgery between August 2012 and August 2015 were prospectively identified. Patients' characteristics and tumor histopathology were evaluated.

RESULTS

Twenty consecutive patients were operated for grossly apparent early ovarian carcinoma. All patients were surgically staged and underwent a systematic pelvic and para- aortic lymphadenectomy. There were eight patients (40%) with lymph node involvement. One of the eight lymph node metastasis was solely in para-aortic node, three patients had both positive-pelvic and aortic nodes, and the other metastasis was in ipsilateral pelvic lymph node. Positive lymph node involvement was significantly higher among patients with poorly differentiated tumor grade (62.5%) (p = 0.02).

CONCLUSION

All patients diagnosed with early OC macroscopically confined to the ovaries should be considered for compre- hensive staging surgery including pelvic and para-aortic lymphadenectomy.