UNLABELLED Ontogenetic anatomy is the mapping of body compartments established during early embryologic development, particularly well demarcated in the adult pelvis. Traditional cancer surgery is based on wide tumour excision with a safe margin, whereas the ontogenetic theory of local tumour spread claims that local dissemination is facilitated in the ontogenetic compartment of origin, but sup...

Total pelvic exenteration (PE) is a radical operation, involving en bloc resection of pelvic organs, including reproductive structures, bladder, and rectosigmoid. In gynecologic oncology, it is most commonly indicated for the treatment of advanced primary or locally recurrent cancer. Careful patient selection and counseling are of paramount importance when considering someone for PE. Part of th...

Biological therapy is currently being investigated in the treatment of a number of malignancies. The hypothesis for the use of this therapeutic modality involves an attempt to stimulate an already existent but perhaps suboptimal immune response to foreign protein, including tumor. Immunologic therapy appears to work best against small-volume disease, as indicated from animal studies. This condi...

The potential applications of operative laparoscopy have expanded with improvements in technology and instrumentation. With newly developed techniques to complete both pelvic and paraaortic lymph node dissection, the use of the laparoscope has increased in patients with pelvic malignancies. Gynecologic oncologists are currently incorporating the techniques of operative laparoscopy in the manage...

Port-site metastasis is a major complication of surgical laparoscopy for gynecologic oncology and has been reported in literature with an incidence of 1.1 to 16%. Factors that contribute for development of port site can be divided in three categories: operative related, wound related and tumor related. With this review, the authors pretend to report the ideal surgical conditions, laparoscopic e...

Of all the gynecologic cancers, ovarian malignancy represents the greatest clinical challenge because it is difficult for early detection, difficult to cure, and it has the highest fatality to case ratio of all the gynecologic malignancies. Many studies have been tried to find a novel strategy on early detection of ovarian cancer. Ultimately, successful screening in asymptomatic women could inc...