Frozen section diagnosis of borderline ovarian tumors with suspicious features of invasive cancer is a devil ’s dilemma for the surgeon: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

ABSTRACTIntroductionFrozen section diagnoses of borderline ovarian tumors are not always straightforward and a borderline frozen section diagnosis with suspicious features of invasive carcinoma (reported as “at least borderline” or synonymous descriptions) presents us with the dilemma of whether or not to perform a full surgical staging procedure. By performing a systematic review and meta‐analysis the prevalence of straightforward borderline and “at least borderline” frozen section diagnoses , as well as proportion of patients with a final diagnosis of invasive carcinoma in these cases, were assessed and compared, as quantification of this dilemma may help us with the issue of this clinical decision.Material and methodsPubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane library databases were searched and studies discussing “at least borderline” frozen section diagnoses were included in the review. Numbers of specific frozen section diagnoses and subsequent final histological diagnoses were extracted and pooled analysis was performed to compare the proportion of patients diagnosed with invasive carcinoma following borderline and “at least borderline” frozen section diagnoses, presented as risk ratio and risk difference with 95% confidence intervals (CI).ResultsOf 4940 screened records, 8 studies were considered eligible for quantitative analysis. A total of 921 women was identified and 230 (25.0%) of these women were diagnosed with “at least borderline” ovarian tumor at the ti...
Source: Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica - Category: OBGYN Authors: Tags: SYSTEMATIC REVIEW Source Type: research