Prognostic impact of lymphadenectomy in clinically early stage malignant germ cell tumour of the ovary

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to determine the impact of lymphadenectomy and nodal metastasis on survival in clinical stage I malignant ovarian germ cell tumour (OGCT). METHODS: Data were obtained from the National Cancer Institute registry from 1988 to 2006. Analyses were performed using Student's t-test, Kaplan–Meier and Cox proportional hazard methods. RESULTS: In all, 1083 patients with OGCT who have undergone surgical treatment and deemed at time of the surgery to have disease clinically confined to the ovary were included 590 (54.48%) had no lymphadenectomy (LND−1) and 493 (45.52%) had lymphadenectomy. Of the 493 patients who had lymphadenectomy, 441 (89.5%) were FIGO surgical stage I (LND+1) and 52 (10.5%) were upstaged to FIGO stage IIIC due to nodal metastasis (LND+3C). The 5-year survival was 96.9% for LND−1, 97.7% for LND+1 and 93.4% for LND+3C (P=0.5). On multivariate analysis, lymphadenectomy was not an independent predictor of survival when controlling for age, histology and race (HR: 1.26, 95% CI: 0.62–2.58, P=0.5). Moreover, the presence of lymph node metastasis had no significant effect on survival (HR: 2.7, 95% CI: 0.67–10.96, P=0.16). CONCLUSION: Neither lymphadenectomy nor lymph node metastasis was an independent predictor of survival in patients with OGCT confined to the ovary. This probably reflects the highly chemosensitive nature of these tumours.