Can lymphadenectomy be omitted in advanced ovarian cancer?-a brief review.

Abstract

The indication of systematic lymphadenectomy in advanced ovarian cancer without apparent macroscopic lymph node involvement has been controversial over the past three decades, and the recommendation to perform it or not has been based on multiple retrospective studies, small cohort studies, and few randomized studies with several biases; however, it seems that this controversy has come to an end after the recent publication of a randomized clinical trial. The study of lymph node disease in ovarian cancer has intensified in the last two decades, so far that it was part of the changes of the last update of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) staging; In this review, a search was made of the available literature to understand the evolution of knowledge about the implications of the realization or not of lymphadenectomy in two scenarios of advanced ovarian cancer (namely, the presence or not of lymph node disease macroscopic), without losing the landscape of the importance of peritoneal disease in these stages, which, as we will see throughout the review, the complete cytoreduction of the tumor remains an integral part of the treatment, since residual disease is one of the most relevant prognostic factors. Nowadays, we can confidently state that systematic lymphadenectomy in patients with advanced ovarian cancer without clinically apparent nodal disease is not necessary, and the presence of macroscopic retroperitoneal lymph node disease should be resected as part of cytoreductive surgery since it will be this and the residual disease that determine the prognosis of the patients.