Approach to the abdominal retroperitoneum in patients with gynecologic malignancies

The treatment of patients with gynecologic malignancies is still widely dependent on clinical staging. The introduction of the concept of surgical staging has significantly altered treatment plans. Better staging allows better treatment and more accurate comparison of survival and cure rates. We describe a surgical technique to expose the abdominal retroperitoneum. Sixteen patients have been explored by this technique. There has been no apparent difficulty in this procedure, even when performed on obese patients.