[Pathology of ovarian cancer]

With respect to their pathomorphology, the ovarian tumors form a large scale of histogenetically different types presenting considerable variations in their biologic behavior and responsiveness to radiologic and cytostatic therapy. The WHO classification contains eight major groups of malignant tumors. About 70% of them are common epithelial tumors. These tumors are the prototype of the ovarian cancer. Progress in early diagnosis can be expected because of recent developments in medical technology. Imageproducing physical methods like ultrasonography and computed tomography are more and more applied in order to obtain an exact preoperative diagnosis and for posttherapeutic check-up. A detailed knowledge of the tumor morphology is necessary for the application of these methods. Due to the multitude of different tumor types, ovarian tumors are paradigmatic for a selective tumor therapy. This is only possible after pretherapeutic differentiated histologic clarification.