[Our and foreign experience in surgical staging of early ovarian cancer]

The aim of our research work was to assess the influence and effect of pelvic and paraaortic lymph node excision as well as peritoneal biopsies as part of the surgical staging in early ovarian cancer. We tried to evaluate the free of disease survival rate and the overall survival rate in patients with early ovarian cancer treated surgically without adjuvant chemotherapy

We assessed 460 patients operated for early ovarian cancer without adjuvant chemotherapy. The researched period included 1995-2011. Our experience was compared with the foreign experience in the this field. We evaluated 153 patients for whom lymph node sampling or partial pelvic and paraaortal lymph node dissection was performed together with peritoneal biopsies. For the other 307 patients lymph node sampling, partial lymph node dissection and peritoneal biopsies were not performed. There was no difference between the groups of patients according to stage, tumor grading and histological types.

We experienced better overall and free of disease survival rate for patients with lymph node sampling, partial dissection and peritoneal biopsies (153 patients) compared to the rest of the patients (307 patients). The five years free of disease survival rate was 82% in the group of patients surgically staged by lymph node sampling, partial resection and peritoneal biopsies (125 p.), compared to 62% in the other group of the patients (190 p.). The overall survival rate in the first group of patients was 90% (138 p.) while for the other group of patients was 68% (209 p.). The recurrences rates were 16% (24 p.) in the group correctly surgically staged (by lymph node sampling, partial lymph node dissection and peritoneal biopsies) compared to 40% (123 p.) for the other group of the patients.

In our research work we found statistically significant differences between the patients correctly surgically staged (pelvic and paraaortal lymph node sampling, partial lymph node dissection, peritoneal biopsies, subdiaphragmatical biopsies) compared to patients, who were not surgically staged. Our results are comparable to the results of the best western clinics and scholars, working in this field.