A Survay on Appendiceal Involvement in Ovarian Mucinous Tumors

The ovarian mucinous tumors include 10%–15% of ovarian tumors. These tumors are either having ovarian origin or they are metastatic from other organs, particularly from gastrointestinal tract. According to ancient studies, routine appendectomy for tumours was determined based on differentiation of primary appendix carcinoma from ovarian tumors. However, recent investigations showed that appendectomy was performed only in cases with abnormal macroscopic appearance of appendix and in advanced stages of ovarian cancer. The aim of the present study is to investigate the correlation between macroscopic appearance of appendix and histopathology results of ovarian mucinous tumors as well as determining the stage of ovarian cancer appendices.
This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted for inquiring about patients with pathologic diagnosis of ovarian and appendix mucinous tumors who had a surgery from 2010 to 2016 in Alzahra teaching hospital, Tabriz-Iran. The presented data were collected through a printed questionnaire followed by analysis.
This study was done on 257 patients with definite diagnosis of ovarian and appendix mucinous tumors. Total number of 121 patients had undergone appendectomy and 110 cases of them had normal macroscopic appearance of appendix. Furthermore, 98.2% of patients with grossly normal looking appendix had normal pathology results and 63.6% of patients with abnormal looking appendix had abnormal pathology results. Totally 5.9% of patients with borderline and 30% of invasive ovarian mucinous tumors had affected appendix. A number of 4 patients were at stage III and 2 of the cases were at stage IV.
According to our investigation and previously published studies, appendectomy during ovarian tumor surgery is the only recommended option in cases with abnormal macroscopic appearance of appendix and advanced stages of ovarian mucinous cancer.