ABSTRACT
This retrospective study reports on 608 cases of benign cystic teratoma of the ovary treated at Siriraj Hospital over a ten-year period from 1988-1997. Mean age of the patients was 33.7 + 11.3 years. Approximately one-third of the patients (35.0%) were asymptomatic when the teratomas were discovered, of the rest, the common presenting symptoms were abdominal pain (52.9%) or palpable abdominal mass (30.6%). The tumors were between 6-10 cm in greatest diameter in more than half of the patients (53.6%) and in 78 patients (12.8%), the tumors were bilateral. Complications from the tumors were found in 72 patients (11.8%): 68 cases of torsion (94.4%); two were spontaneous rupture (2.8%); and two were infected (2.8%). The mean age of patients with twisted tumor was significantly less than that of patients with uncomplicated tumor (p = 0.02), and abdominal pain was found more commonly in the patients with twisted tumor (p < 0.001). Among cases with torsion, more than 90 per cent of the tumors were found to be of intermediate size (6-15 cm), while only 68.8 per cent were found in uncomplicated cases (p < 0.001). Surgical treatment was conservative in 63.8 per cent) and radical in 36.2 per cent of the patients.