title: Pathways of metastases from primary organs to the ovaries.
abstract: To investigate the metastatic pathways from the primary organs to the ovaries, we examined the microscopic findings from 18 original and 18 metastatic ovarian tumors carefully. In addition, we examined the immunohistochemical findings (Victoria blue stain for vascular invasion and D2-40 expression for lymphangio invasion) of metastatic ovarian tumors carefully. There were 4 (57%) ovarian lymphangio invasion cases in the 7 gastric cancers, but there were no cases in the 6 colorectal cancers (P < 0.05). There were 4 (67%) ovarian vascular invasion cases and one (17%) liver metastasis case in the 6 colorectal cancers, while there were no ovarian vascular invasions (P < 0.05) or no liver metastases in the 7 gastric cancers. The patients with metastatic ovarian tumors originating from distant organs who were treated at the same time as the original cancers had a significantly poorer prognosis than the patients with ovarian tumors treated later (P < 0.05). The rate of lymphatic metastasis from the stomach to the ovary was significantly higher than from the colon to the ovary. In addition we hypothesized that the rate of intravascular metastasis from the colorectum to the ovary was relatively higher than from the stomach to the ovary.
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Otsu Red-Cross Hospital, 1-1-35 Nagara, Otsu, Shiga 520-0046, Japan.
authors.forename: Yukio
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yamanishi
authors.forename: Masafumi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Koshiyama
authors.forename: Megumi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ohnaka
authors.forename: Masashi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ueda
authors.forename: Shingo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ukita
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hishikawa
authors.forename: Michikazu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nagura
authors.forename: Tomoko
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Masaya
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hirose
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ozasa
authors.forename: Tomoyuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shirase