Ovarian pathologies in childhood

The incidence of ovarian diseases is 2-3 / 100.000 in childhood. In childhoodsome problems which we encounter with in evaluation of ovarian pathologies are;existance of different terminologies, lack of pathological criteria and different types oftumor classiffications. In this study, 55 patients younger than 16 years who had ovariandisease were treated and followed up and then the results were evaluated retrospectivelyand prospectively between March 2001 and January 2009. Patients were seperated in 3groups as ovarian torsions (n: 21), neoplastic ovarian pathologies (n: 19) and nonneoplasticovarian pathologies (n : 28).İn non-neoplastic ovarian pathologies, the most frequent clinical symptom wasabdominal pain (71.4%) and the most frequent clinical finding was abdominalendorness (71.4%) in the is group. Twentyone patients were treated surgically whereasseven were treated conservatively. As the result of histopathological examinationsfollicular cysts (n: 11), corpus luteum cysts (n: 7), simple cysts (n: 8), paraovarian cyst(n: 1) and massive ovarian edema (n: 1) were observed.In the neoplastic ovarian pathology group the most frequent clinical symptomwas abdominal pain (57.8%) and the most frequent clinical finding was abdominalendorness (63.8%). Most frequent complications were found to be torsion (30%).Mature cystic teratoma in seven, serous cystadenoma in height, dysgerminoma in two,one juvenile granulosa cell tumor in and one patient seromucinous borderline tumorwere observed after histopathological examinations. After surgical treatmentchemotherapy were given to two patients with dysgerminoma.In the ovarian torsion group, torsions were due to non-neoplastic pathology inseven patients whereas it was due to neoplastic reasons in six patients. In height otherpatients torsion were developed without any cysts or tumor. Most frequent clinicalsymptom was abdominal pain and most frequent clinical finding was abdominalsensitivity. Oopherectomy or salphingoopherctomy was performed in twenty patients.In one patient ovary was preserved as circulation turned normal after de-torsion.This study shows that there is an increase in the incidence of ovarian pathologiesin recent years. Clinical findings in our patients and distribution of tumors according totheir histopathological types were find to be consistent with the current literature.Key words: Ovary, Cyst, Tumor, Torsion