Impact of a structured quality management program on surgical outcome in primary advanced ovarian cancer.

Objective: Surgical outcome in advanced ovarian cancer (AOC) is an important prognostic factor and the only factor amendable to improvement by optimization. Therefore, introduction of quality management programs (QM) regarding the surgical therapy in ovarian cancer may help to improve outcome.

Methods: We introduced a specific ovarian cancer quality management program in 2001 in our gynecologic oncology center.

Para-aortic lymph node metastasis in malignant dysgerminoma of the ovary.

Dysgerminomas comprise approximately 2-5% of all ovarian malignancies and mostly affect young adolescent women. Primary comprehensive surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin (BEP) are the current recommended treatment options, the latter reserved for advanced stages (FIGO II-IV). We report two patients aged 20 and 26 years who presented with an initial FIGO stage IA, but inadequately assessed.

Impact of treatment guidelines and implementation of a quality assurance program on quality of care in endometrial cancer.

Background: The treatment guidelines in the last decade have shown a trend towards increasing surgical radicality in endometrial cancer. Little information is available on the implementation of standards into clinical reality. We evaluated the adherence to standard therapy before and after introduction of an internal quality management system and determined the reasons for non-adherence.

Compliance to consensus recommendations, surgeon's experience, and introduction of a quality assurance and management program: influence on therapy of early-stage ovarian carcinoma.

State-of-the-art surgical staging and adjuvant chemotherapy in early-stage ovarian carcinoma have an impact on patient's outcome, but compliance to guidelines and consensus recommendations is still poor. This article reports on our results before and after introduction of a quality assurance and management program in our clinic in 2001. Patients with ovarian carcinoma limited to the pelvis who underwent primary surgery in our hospital from 1997 to October 2007 were eligible for this study.