Surgical lymph node assessment in mucinous ovarian carcinoma staging: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The proportion of women with mucinous ovarian carcinoma in whom nodal metastases are identified during staging remains unclear.

To review the literature on surgical lymph node assessment during staging of women diagnosed with mucinous ovarian carcinoma.

A systematic search using synonyms of 'mucinous ovarian carcinoma' and 'lymph node assessment' was conducted in PubMed, Scopus, Embase and the Cochrane Library.

When they covered ten or more mucinous ovarian carcinoma cases, staging surgery and minimally one of the following outcomes: prevalence of metastases, stage shift or survival data.

Studies were quality evaluated with the Cochrane risk-of-bias assessment tool for non-randomised studies of interventions. Outcomes were pooled using an inverse variance weighted random effects model.

Sixteen studies were included. In 278 women with mucinous ovarian cancer suspected to be stage I-II, a pooled proportion of 0.8% (95% CI <0.1-2.9%) had lymph node metastases and were upstaged. In those suspected of stage I (n = 184), this proportion was 0.7% (95% CI <0.1-3.8%). No difference (P = 0.287) was found in metastases between sampling at 0.0% (95% CI 0.0-3.3%) and complete pelvic and/or para-aortic lymph node dissection at 1.2% (95% CI <0.1-4.2%). One study directly compared the survival of patients staged with and without lymph node dissection and reported no significant difference.

Surgical lymph node assessment in women suspected of stage I-II mucinous ovarian carcinoma rarely identifies nodal metastases and consequently has no significant impact on staging.

Surgical lymph node assessment in women with stage I-II mucinous ovarian cancer rarely has staging consequences.