[Diagnosis and treatment of epithelial cancer of the ovary. Apropos of 102 cases].

This is a retrospective study including 102 cases records of female patients presenting with epithelial carcinoma of the ovary. Survival, as in the other series, depended upon the stage of the cancer at the time of diagnosis, mean survival rates being 77.1, 57.7, 26.6 and 19.3 for stages I, II, III and IV respectively. However, most of all, survival was related to the quantity of remanent tumoral tissue following the initial laparotomy. The 5-year survival rates were 84%, 42% and 10% when there was no residual tumor, when the latter measured less than 2 cm, and more than 2 cm, respectively. In contradistinction to what is generally found in such studies, the diagnosis here was established at earlier stages, since 53% of the cases of interest were female patients with stage I or II carcinoma. The chief argument, therefore, is based on the methods of early diagnosis and, judging from what is generally admitted in literature, on the place of extended surgery.