Prevalence of occult gynecological cancer in women undergoing surgeries for benign indications in a tertiary healthcare center of Chhattisgarh

Abstract

Background: Hysterectomy, the surgical removal of uterus, is 2 most frequently performed major surgical procedures on women, with 90% of hysterectomies are performed for benign indications. However, there may be cases in which malignancy or premalignant lesions which are only confirmed on histopathology are defined as occult malignancy. Methods: We conducted a prospective observational study on a cohort of women undergoing various gynaecological surgeries for benign indications in a time period of January 2019 to January 2020 in the Department of obstetrics and gynaecology, Dr. BRAM hospital and Pt. J. N. M. medical college, Raipur (C.G) to find out the prevalence of occult pre malignant and malignant lesions. Results: Of 132 women who underwent surgeries for benign gynecological indications, based on final histopathological report, prevalence of occult premalignant lesion was 11.36% (95% CI 5.7-16.3%) and prevalence of occult malignancy was 2.27% (95% CI 0.2 -4.8%). Prevalence of occult premalignant lesion of corpus uteri and cervix uteri was 2.3 and 9.1% respectively. No occult premalignant lesion of ovary was found. Prevalence of occult malignant lesion of corpus uteri and ovary was 1.5 and 0.75% respectively. Conclusions: We observed that even after complete preoperative workup only 72.7% of the preoperative clinical diagnoses were correlated with their histopathological diagnosis. Thus, while making the diagnosis, risk factors along with standard preoperative approach should be strongly adhered to prevent misdiagnosis and to prevent missing of any pre malignant or malignant findings.