title: Is it necessary to do retroperitoneal evaluation in borderline epithelial ovarian tumors?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Borderline epithelial ovarian tumors have good prognosis without any adjuvant therapy. The advantage of aggressive surgical staging, especially retroperitoneal lymph node sampling is questionable in patients with borderline ovarian tumors. We designed this study to evaluate the necessity of retroperitoneal pelvic and para-aortic lymph node dissection in the treatment of borderline epithelial ovarian tumors.
  
  
  METHODS
  From 1998 to 2007, 57 women who were diagnosed with borderline epithelial ovarian tumor in our hospital were prospectively accrued and evaluated; 27 of them (47.3%) had full surgical staging procedure including para-aortic and pelvic node dissection. Student's t-test was used to compare follow-up times.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Median follow-up time was 54.6 (12-96) months for all patients in the study. There was one recurrence of disease, which was in the complete staging group. Follow-up times of patients were not statistically different between lymph node evaluated and non-evaluated groups (p = 0.10). We did not find any metastasis in lymph nodes in 27 women who had complete surgical staging procedure.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Patients with borderline epithelial tumors who had full surgical staging procedure do not have survival advantage over those who had no lymph node evaluation and yet were patients with malignant ovarian tumors.
authors.affiliation: Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Dr. Lutfi Kirdar Kartal Education and Research Hospital, Kartal, Istanbul, Turkey. meltempirim@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Zehra Meltem
authors.initials: ZM
authors.lastname: Pirimoglu
authors.forename: Yasemin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Afsin
authors.forename: Kadir
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Guzelmeric
authors.forename: Muberra
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yilmaz
authors.forename: Orhan
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Unal
authors.forename: Mehmet Cem
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Turan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002277:Carcinoma / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008197:Lymph Node Excision; D008875:Middle Aged; D020380:Needs Assessment; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012187:Retroperitoneal Space; D016896:Treatment Outcome