[Clinico-pathologic evaluation of retroperitoneal lymph node metastasis in ovarian carcinoma]

Retroperitoneal lymph node dissection was performed in 18 cases of ovarian carcinoma. Of 18 patients, 8 (44.4%) patients had lymph node metastasis. It was found that 50.0% of patients with stage III and 100% of patients with stage IV had lymph node metastasis. Serous cystadenocarcinoma and poorly differentiated carcinoma were demonstrated to be the risk factors in lymph node metastasis. Lymph node metastasis was found to be significantly correlated with the volume of ascites, peritoneal cytology, or peritoneal dissemination. Patients without peritoneal dissemination or positive peritoneal cytology had no lymph node metastasis. Patients with bilateral ovarian tumors tended to have a higher incidence of lymph node metastasis than those with a unilateral ovarian tumor. The incidence of para-aortic lymph node metastasis was found to be higher than that of pelvic or inguinal lymph node metastasis. We concluded that in the clinical stage, serous cystadenocarcinoma, poorly differentiated epithelial carcinoma, ascites, peritoneal cytology, peritoneal dissemination and bilateral ovarian tumors were assumed to affect the incidence of retroperitoneal lymph node metastasis of ovarian carcinoma. It was suspected that the lymphatic spread of ovarian carcinoma had two routes: via ascites and peritoneal dissemination.