ASO Author Reflections: Systematic Lymph Node Dissection in Ovarian Cancer Under Attack

Excerpt

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) has been recognizes as histologically distinct disease for many years, and it was thought, that is would arise mainly from inclusion cysts in the ovaries. Later, in turned out, that the development of EOC is more complex. Type I EOC are thought to arise stepwise from endometriosis to borderline lesions to low-grade carcinoma, harboring, e.g., KRAS, BRAF, and ERBB2 mutations. In that model, type II EOC derives from serous tubal intraepithelial carcinoma of the epithelial of tubal fimbria and leads to high-grade carcinoma, nearly always harboring p53 mutations.1 EOC regularly metastasizes directly intraabdominally and in the retroperitoneal lymph nodes. Systematic pelvic and paraaortic lymph node dissection (LNE) was conducted in early EOC for staging and in advanced EOC for treatment purposes. The current analyses were conducted under the impression of the recent thoughts about the pathogenesis and the modified pathological classification of EOC. …