Intratumoral blood flow analysis in ovarian cancer: what does it mean?

The objective of this study is to evaluate the significance of intratumoral blood flow in ovarian cancer. Forty-seven patients with histologically proved ovarian cancer underwent transvaginal gray scale sonography, and color and Doppler sonography before surgery. Intratumoral blood flow velocity waveforms obtained from architecture within the tumor were recorded, and resistive index and peak systolic velocity were calculated. Neither resistive index values nor peak systolic velocity values differed significantly among the histological diagnoses, regardless of stage (including metastatic tumor) or morphologic classification of tumor. These results suggest that intratumoral blood flow analysis in ovarian cancer cannot provide information on individual tumor characteristics.