Original ArticleMetachronous benign ovarian tumors are not uncommon in children
Section snippets
Methods
This retrospective study was performed in the Children’s Hospital of Helsinki University Central Hospital. We identified from the hospital database altogether 46 patients operated for an ovarian neoplastic tumor during 1981–2011. Twenty-two (48%) of them had mature teratoma.
The clinical data of the diagnostic and operative procedures as well as follow-up data were collected from the hospital medical and surgical records. The ovarian tissue samples were re-evaluated by one of the researchers
Results
The median age of the 22 patients with mature teratoma was 11.4 (range 1.5–15.3) years at primary surgery. Preoperative diagnostic evaluation was done with ultrasonography for all 22 patients, with confirmation by magnetic resonance imaging for 11 patients and with computed tomography for 4 patients. None of the patients had tumor on the contralateral ovary either in preoperative imaging or in peroperative examination. Contralateral ovarian biopsy was performed in one patient during the primary
Discussion
In this retrospective study, we observed that the patients operated for ovarian mature teratomas during childhood are in a substantial risk of having benign neoplastic tumors in the contralateral ovary later in life.
Ovarian neoplasms are rare in children. In our 30 years’ material, 46 patients with ovarian neoplasms were diagnosed in a population of about 18,000 newborns yearly. Almost half of the primary tumors were mature teratomas, fitting to the previous observations [9], [10]. In our study,
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2021, Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent GynecologyCitation Excerpt :A retrospective study performed at the Children's Hospital of Helsinki University identified 5 of 22 cases (23%) of metachronous tumors after ovariectomy for mature teratomas and calculated a 14% and 66% risk of developing metachronous tumors within 5 and 10 years after surgery, respectively. In 2 cases, the metachronous neoplasm was a seromucinous cystadenoma.5 Moreover, a few cases of ovarian cystic teratoma in association with granulosa cell tumor have been reported in adult women or young girls.6,7