The epidemiologic pathology of ovarian cancer

Abstract

Analyses of two large series of cases of ovarian cancer were carried out, partly to compare such composite material with specialized series and partly to determine the epidemiologic and progrnostic meanings of the various typical diagnoses. From the international data, only dysgerminomas had a geographic distribution dissimilar to that of all ovarian cancers of middle and late life. The United States data indicated that malignant teratomas were relatively frequent in blacks and showed a bimodal age distribution. Stage distribution and survival rates tended to be very much like those reported in single-hospital series for the same histologic type of cancer. Far too many cancers, however, had not been assigned specific diagnoses, and because of this the clinicians (and epidemiologists) are being denied important information.