Does paraaortic lymphadenectomy have a benefit in the treatment of ovariancancer that is apparently confined to the ovaries?

We conducted a retrospective review of all epithelial ovarian carcinoma pat ients with disease that is apparently confined to the ovaries who were trea ted in the Obstetric and Gynecologic Hospital of the University of Tours. I n our hospital, no lymphadenectomies for such epithelial ovarian carcinoma patients are carried out. We studied the survival of these patients that we re operated upon from 1 December 1975 until 1 August 1997. 43 epithelial ov arian carcinoma patients were studied; 22 were stage Ia, 1 was stage Ib and 20 were stage Ic. The average age was 58 years (range 27-86 years). 5% (2/ 43) developed recurrent disease and the rates of disease-free and overall s urvival after 5 years were 83% and 90.3% respectively. These results are ve ry close to those described in literature for patients who underwent paraao rtic and pelvic lymphadenectomy. As no series to date has demonstrated the benefit of paraaortic lymphadenectomy on survival and we know that paraaort ic lymphadenectomy increases morbidity, we think it reasonable to propose s urgery without lymphadenectomy for the treatment of early ovarian epithelia l cancer patients whose disease is apparently confined to the ovaries. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.