Intra-operative cytology of ovarian tumours

Abstract

Ovarian neoplasms are a heterogenous group of benign and malignant tumors of epithelial, stromal and germ cell origin. Most of the ovarian tumors cannot be easily distinguished from one another on the basis of their clinical or gross characteristics alone. Therefore , cytologic interpretation of ovarian neoplasms is both interesting and challenging 1 .Fine needle aspiration cytology in the preoperative investigation of ovarian tumors has been discouraged since the puncture of a cystic carcinoma might cause intraperitoneal seeding. But intraoperative imprint cytology will provide a rapid diagnosis ( within 20 minutes ) without the fear of dissemination in case of ovarian cancer. Rapid intraoperative diagnosis of the nature of ovarian tumors in a young woman avoids unnecessary removal of contralateral ovary and helps preserve fertility. It can allow individualization of treatment like complete surgery in a case of malignancy and particularly the postoperative irradiation of anaplastic carcinoma. It can also be used for staging, for post-operative follow-up, and for recurrences. Materials obtained this way can be used for flow cytometry and cytogenetic studies. In spite of the various applicability, its use has not been widely recognized in diagnosis of ovarian tumors and there are only a few reports on diagnosis of ovarian tumors by imprint cytology.We undertook this study to find out the accuracy of imprint cytology in intraoperative ovarian tumor diagnosis by correlating it with histopathology which is taken as the gold standard in diagnosis of ovarian tumors.