[Ovarian epithelial tumors of borderline malignancy]

Ovarian tumor is known to show histological variation. Each tumor shows various clinical behavior. Ovarian epithelial tumors consist of several types of histological findings. Epithelial tumors can be classified into benign, borderline malignancy and malignant for their biological behavior. Recently the therapeutic effectiveness against ovarian cancer is increasing in order to establish the operation technique and development of chemotherapeutic method with cisplatin. Therefore it is important that borderline malignant tumors which are said to have a good prognosis be defined from obviously malignant tumors to evaluate accurately the effectiveness of the therapy against the ovarian cancer. On the other hand, borderline malignant tumors with characters of a malignant tumor, must be distinguished from benign adenoma because long-term follow up is required. However, it is difficult to make an exact histological diagnosis of benign adenoma, borderline malignancy and malignancy because the histological criteria of borderline malignancy is lacking in concreteness. The histological criteria should be defined more clearly and concretely. For example, mitotic counts per 10 HPF of borderline malignancy and DNA ploidy. Next, because of good prognosis, we need a quick therapeutic guide line for borderline malignancy, especially for stage I and young women.