The omentum and omentectomy in epithelial ovarian cancer: a reappraisal: part II--The role of omentectomy in the staging and treatment of apparent early stage epithelial ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVE:This article reviews the literature concerning the role of omentectomy in the staging and treatment of clinically apparent early stage epithelial ovarian cancer. METHODS:A review of the English language literature based on a MEDLINE (PubMed) database search using the keywords: ovary, cancer, carcinoma, omentum, and omentectomy. An additional collection of reports was found by systematically reviewing all references from retrieved papers. RESULTS:Historically, the realization that ovarian cancer cells have a predisposition to metastasize to the omentum has led to the inclusion of omentectomy, both for the purpose of accurate staging of ovarian cancer and for its possible therapeutic benefit. In apparently early stage epithelial ovarian cancer, microscopic disease in the omentum is found in 0-22% of the cases; however extra-ovarian disease isolated to the omentum is found in 2-7% of cases at most. There are no specific guidelines as to how much of the omentum should be removed, but pathology studies show that for the purpose of staging and detecting microscopic disease, omental biopsies are probably sufficient in a grossly normal appearing omentum. In cases where adjuvant chemotherapy is planned, the role of omentectomy appears to be primarily for staging, while its therapeutic role remains unclear in microscopic omental disease. CONCLUSIONS:In apparent early stage ovarian cancer, the presence of isolated omental metastases is relatively rare. For staging purposes in such cases, random omental biopsies rather than total omentectomy may suffice. Furthermore, chemotherapy appears to effectively treat microscopic disease and therefore if this is already planned the benefit of omentectomy is unclear.