Up to 10% of women will have some form of surgery during their lifetime for the presence of an ovarian mass. In premenopausal women, almost all ovarian masses and cysts are benign. The overall incidence of a symptomatic ovarian cyst in a premenopausal female being malignant is approximately 1:1000 increasing to 3:1000 at the age of 50. The current article is an excerpt of the RCOG/BSGE Joint Guideline entitled, “Management of Suspected Ovarian Masses in Premenopausal Women”.
Preoperative differentiation between the benign and the malignant ovarian mass in the premenopausal woman can be problematic with no test or algorithm being clearly superior in terms of accuracy. Exceptions are germ cell tumors with elevations of specific tumor markers such as alphafetoprotein (α-FP) and human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG). Ten percent of suspected ovarian masses are ultimately found to be…
