Aspiration of simple pelvic cysts during pregnancy

Traditional management of persistent ovarian cysts in pregnancy is explorative laparotomy at 16-20 weeks of gestation and resection of the tumor. Scheduling surgery to this time of pregnancy is accepted in order to prevent abortions that are common whenever surgery is done in the first trimester, without delaying treatment of ovarian tumors which harbor a malignant potential. In the following article we report of 10 cases where simple ovarian cysts diagnosed during pregnancy were successfully treated by sonographically guided cyst aspiration. This new approach is justified with no fear of missing a malignant ovarian tumor due to strict ultrasonic characteristics of benign cysts that include unilocular simple appearing cyst with no solid echogenic parts, septations or papillary structures. For 5 of the 10 women undergoing aspiration, this constituted the definitive treatment, while the remaining 5 were later operated. We conclude that aspiration of simple cysts during pregnancy is safe, may save surgical intervention and in some cases this will be the definitive treatment.