INTRAOPERATIVE CONSULTATION OF OVARIAN NEOPLASMS

A review of 313 intraoperative consultations and/or frozen section eva luations of neoplasms of the ovary was conducted. The intraoperative d iagnosis of benign or malignant was compared with the diagnosis found at permanent section. Only six cases were deferred to permanent sectio n. The overall accuracy was 93.9%. The sensitivity was 72.7%, and this was explained by the high proportion of borderline or low malignant c ell tumors in this series. The specificity and predictive values were in excess of 95%. Thirteen cases were diagnosed incorrectly at intraop erative consultation. Eight of these were judged to be sampling errors , one was due to poor technical quality, and four were attributed to i nterpretation errors. Intraoperative consultation is, and should conti nue to be, a valuable tool in the evaluation of ovarian neoplasms.