Objectives: Although ovarian tumors are rare in pregnancy, they constitute a real diagnostic and therapeutic challenge.
Design: The aim of the study was to describe pathomorphological and clinical characteristic of ovarian tumor in pregnancy and to review the effects of diagnostics and treatment.
Materials and methods: The study included 76 pregnant women treated due to ovarian tumors at Department of Gynaecology and Oncology, Collegium Medicum of Jagiellonian University. The age of patients range from 18 to 41 years (mean age 26 years). Diameter of each tumor was more then 5 cm.
Results: The symptoms of the tumors occurred in 25% of patients. Most of them were unilateral (96.05% cases). In 88.16% of cases the tumor diameter did not exceeded 10 cm. 71.05% of tumors were detected in first trimester of pregnancy. More then 50% of cystic tumors, that had not been surgically treated directly after detection disappeared during observation. Most common histological type of operated tumors were teratoma adultum (50%) and corpus luteum cyst. The malignant tumor of ovary was detected in 3.12% of cases. Spontaneous abortion after surgical treatment occurred in one patient after, emergency operation due to tumor torsion.
Conclusions: Most of the ovarian tumors in pregnancy were benign. Incidence of ovarian malignancies in pregnancy did not exceed 4%. More then 50% of tumors that had not been removed directly after detection disappeared in the course of observation. Spontaneous abortion after operation rarely complicated surgical treatment.