A Randomized Trial of Lymphadenectomy in Patients with Advanced Ovarian Neoplasms

Systematic pelvic and paraaortic lymphadenectomy has been widely used in the surgical treatment of patients with advanced ovarian cancer, although supporting evidence from randomized clinical trials has been limited.

We intraoperatively randomly assigned patients with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer (International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage IIB through IV) who had undergone macroscopically complete resection and had normal lymph nodes both before and during surgery to either undergo or not undergo lymphadenectomy. All centers had to qualify with regard to surgical skills before participation in the trial. The primary end point was overall survival.