Comparison of Clinico-Pathological Features Between Epithelial Ovarian Cancer Patients With and Without Endometriosis: A Cross-Sectional Study

Women with endometriosis have a high risk of developing ovarian carcinoma that may occur due to endometriosis lesions. There is few research have so far focused on the clinical factors in patients with endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer (EAOC). Accordingly, this study aimed at comparing the demographic and obstetric characteristics between ovarian cancer with and without endometriosis

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 20 EAOC patients and 140 non-EAOC individuals who had gone under surgery from 2011-17 at Al-Zahra hospital. Clinico-pathological characteristics of the two groups including first group only had malignant epithelial ovarian tumor (non-EAOC) and second group had both malignant epithelial ovarian tumor and endometriosis (EAOC). P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

EAOC cases were significantly younger (P=0.002) and had lower number of pregnancy (P=0.002), parity (P=0.004), and term pregnancy (P=0.005) than non-EAOC patients. A large proportion of EAOC cases had clear cell and endometrioid histopathology in comparison to non-EAOC individuals (P<0.001) and most of the tumors in these cases were unilateral (P=0.01).

We found that age, parity, gravidity, and term pregnancy as well as laterality and histopathologic type of epithelial ovarian cancers vary in EAOC and non-EAOC individuals. Further research is required to identify these differences.