Ovarian Teratomas in Children and Adolescents: Our Own Experience and Review of Literature

Abstract

Background: Ovarian teratomas are the most common type of ovarian mass during childhood and adolescence. There is no clear guidance for the management of the ovarian teratomas in children and adolescents. It is necessary, however, to understand the feature of these tumours and the indications for operating on them, and to put subjective criteria for the management in elective or emergency presentations. Methods: Medical records of patients between the age of 12 and 20 years old that underwent surgery for ovarian teratomas at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in University Hospital of Ioannina, between January 2000 and August 2022, were reviewed. A medical database was searched between January 2000 and August 2022 with the following keywords: ovarian teratoma, paediatrics and adolescents. Results: We present the results of forty patients, with a mean age of 11.8 years of age. All patients had surgery, where three out of four underwent oophorectomy and only one out of four underwent ovary-sparing operation; similar results were found in the literature. Conclusion: Ovary-sparing treatment is more common recently compared with the past, such as MIS compared with laparotomy. Better-organised and -planned prospective multi-centre studies are necessary to gain a deeper knowledge of the physiology and prognostic factors of teratomas in children.

Giant mature ovarian teratoma case report

“…Clinical presentation is usually asymptomatic, but it can manifest as an abdominal pain in 70-80% of cases or as a mass in lower abdomen. Indeed, nearby organs can be affected or compressed if the tumor grows to very large sizes which lead to difficulty in distinguishing the diagnosis [5,1] . In note, 60% of mature teratomas are between 5-10 cm while, only 10% of it are larger than 15 cm [8] .…”

“…Almost 95% of GCT are mature teratomas and 30% of it located in ovaries, so it is considered the most common benign ovarian tumor in childhood and adolescent [4] . Furthermore, these tumors are usually asymptomatic and they diagnosed coincidentally, but clinical manifestation such as abdominal or pelvic pain and ovarian torsion may occur [5] . Mature teratomas usually known as small tumors, they diagnosed easily due to the development of radiological investigation and it is very rare to see a teratoma larger than 10 cm [6] .…”

Immature Teratoma: Diagnosis and Management—A Review of the Literature

“…Immature neuroectodermal tissues include islets and nests of neuroblasts, hypercellular and mitotically active immature glia, and primitive, melanic pigmented retinal tissue. Occasionally, there may be associated benign vascular proliferations associated with neural elements, it can be confused with a vascular tumor [19][20][21].…”

Ovarian Masses in Children and Adolescents: A Review of the Literature with Emphasis on the Diagnostic Approach

“…Although mature teratomas are mostly asymptomatic and can be diagnosed incidentally, patients may present with abdominal pain, palpable mass, sensation of abdominal fullness, constipation, nausea/vomiting and anorexia [2,4,69,70]. Complications of mature teratoma include torsion, rupture and infection and less commonly autoimmune hemolytic anemia, immune-mediated limbic encephalitis and malignant transformation [69,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79].…”