Metachronous benign ovarian tumors are not uncommon in children

Purpose: To evaluate the risk for metachronous ovarian tumor in pediatric patients with mature ovarian teratoma. Methods: During 1981-2011, 22 children underwent oophorectomy for mature teratoma at the median age of 11.4 (range 1.5-15.3) years. The patients were followed-up in median 4.4 (range 0.5-25.5) years. Results: None of the patients had synchronous bilateral tumor at the time of primary operation, but during follow-up five patients (23%) got metachronous contralateral ovarian tumor. The contralateral tumor was observed in median 3.6 (range 1-8.8) years after the primary operation. According to Kaplan-Meier analysis the risk for contralateral tumor was 14% +/- 8% (SE) within five years and 66% +/- 26% (SE) within 10 years. In this series, the contralateral tumor was operated by ovary preserving surgery. Three of the metachronous tumors were mature teratomas and two were seromucinous infantile cystadenomas. One patient had a second teratoma recurrence 14 years after the first recurrence. Conclusions: More than one fifth of the children with ovarian mature teratoma get metachronous benign tumor to the contralateral ovary. Therefore a yearly ultrasound follow-up is needed for these patients up to potential pregnancy to enable early diagnosis, ovary preserving surgery and maintenance of fertility in the case of metachronous tumor. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.