[Assessment of cases with ovarian cancer stage I]

In the therapy of primary ovarian cancer in which the tumor is located in one ovary, radical operation including the uterus and contralateral ovary is performed in principle even in the case of young patients. However, there have been only a few results reported on the primary cases in our country, and the radical operation is adopted at present in line with western policy. In the present study, the authors examined mainly the prognosis of 49 patients with primary ovarian cancer (stage Ia, 25 cases; stage Ib, 2 cases; stage Ic, 22 cases), and the following results were obtained. Among 25 cases at stage Ia, the radical operation was performed on 14 cases, and only the conservative operation was performed on the remaining 11 cases. All of the latter are still well. Only one died among patients at stage Ia. Therefore, in these cases, complete treatments were done, including radical operation, postoperative irradiation and chemotherapy, and second look operation. The prognosis of the patients at Ic was worse than that at IIa + b. Therefore, it was felt to be necessary to treat them as progressive cancer. There was no difference between the prognoses of the conservative and radical operations even at stage Ic. Thus, problems such as functional maintenance were thought to be taken into consideration. Risk factors considered were tissue type, amount of ascites, capsular rhexis, and advanced age, etc. Since the prognosis after the second look operation was good, it was considered to be a treatment which should be introduced actively, even at stage I.