Preoperative discrimination of benign and malignant ovarian tumors using color Doppler sonography and its correlation with histopathology.

ABSTRACT

A total of forty clinically diagnosed ovarian tumors were studied over a period of one year. The study aimed at evaluating the efficacy of trans-vaginal color Doppler sonography (TV-CDS) in preoperative discrimination of benign and malignant ovarian tumors and to correlate the imaging findings with postoperative histopathological findings. The pulsatility Index (PI) and Resistive Index (RI) were studied as primary effecacy variables of TV-CDS. In the present study, using TV-CDS, 72.5% of the ovarian tumors were found benign and 22.8% were malignant which were significantly correlated with postoperative histopathological findings. The average PI for benign and malignant tumors were 1.98 and 0.77 respectively and RI for benign and malignant tumors were 0.62 and 0.41 respectively. The low PI and RI values in malignant tumors as compared to benign ones were statistically highly significant (p < 0.001). The validity tests for TV-CDS were found to be 90% sensitive, 100% specific and 97% accurate. The study concludes that TV-CDS is a useful imaging diagnostic modality in preoperative discrimination of benign and malignant ovarian tumors due to its excellent characterization of tumors neo-vascularization.