Scope and limitations of intraoperative cytological methods of diagnosis of ovarian tumors

• DOI: 10.25259/cytojournal_226_2024
• Publication Date: 2025-04-09T05:56:36Z
• Authors: Erna Ahsan; Saurabh Kumar Gautam; Ashok Singh; Arvind Kumar; Ravi Hari Phulware

The mainstay of treatment for ovarian cancer is surgery. To prevent under-treatment and overtreatment and to choose the best surgical strategy for patients with ovarian tumors, intraoperative pathological assessment is essential. Frozen sections (FSs) have been historically used for intraoperative evaluation. In 1927, cytology was introduced by Dudgeon and Patrick as a new method of intraoperative pathological examination. Diagnosis can be made in minutes by making smears from the lesion, staining them quickly, and analyzing them under a microscope. Following a comprehensive search of the literature, using pertinent keywords in PubMed, and reviewing the data, it was discovered that intraoperative cytology (IOC) had been reported to have a diagnostic accuracy in ovarian lesions comparable to that of FSs. Few of the studies have confirmed that IOC has several benefits over FSs. There are drawbacks as well, which one should be mindful of. In this review, every aspect that is connected to IOC is covered in detail, along with the potential for raising the standard of IOC to make it more applicable in the present times.