A 15-year comprehensive literature review of 99 primary ovarian carcinoid tumors

Abstract

A 15-year comprehensive literature review of 99 primary ovarian carcinoid tumors Tiberiu-Augustin Georgescu1,2 , Roxana Elena Bohiltea3,4,*, Valentin Varlas3,4 , Octavian Munteanu5,6 , Florentina Furtunescu7 , Antonia-Carmen Lisievici1,*, Corina Grigoriu4,5 1Department of Pathology, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania 2Department of Pathology, National Institute for Mother and Child Health Alessandrescu-Rusescu, 011061 Bucharest, Romania 3Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Filantropia Hospital, 011171 Bucharest, Romania 4Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania 5Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Emergency University Hospital, 050098 Bucharest, Romania 6Discipline of Anatomy, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania 7Department of Public Health and Management, Faculty of Medicine, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 020021 Bucharest, Romania *Correspondence: r.bohiltea@yahoo.com (Roxana Elena Bohiltea); lisievici.carmen@yahoo.com (Antonia-Carmen Lisievici) Academic Editor: Michael H. Dahan Submitted: 22 November 2021 Revised: 7 December 2021 Accepted: 8 December 2021 Published: 12 January 2022 Abstract Objective: Primary ovarian carcinoids are neuroendocrine tumors, representing up to 1% of all ovarian tumors. In this paper, the authors aimed at analyzing the clinical and pathological aspects of all recently published ovarian carcinoid, providing new correlations regarding them. Mechanism: The authors have reviewed all cases of primary ovarian carcinoid reported in international journals since 2005 to date. A total of 99 cases published in 68 articles have been found and analyzed. Findings in brief: Our results up to 29.31% of patients presented with carcinoid heart disease, and 17.24% had an abdominal mass, which caused them to present to the physician. Patients presenting with metastases had more frequently the insular subtype (33.33%) and had similar median age as those without metastases. A teratoma component was noticed in 58.9% of cases and was also associated with the insular pattern of carcinoid. To our best knowledge, this paper includes the largest review of primary ovarian carcinoid to date. Conclusions: The incidence of carcinoid heart disease might have been underestimated up to this moment, thus, requiring further imagistic investigations of patients presenting with these symptoms. Additionally, the insular variant was most frequently associated with the presence of both teratoma (52.94%) and metastases (33.33%), although previous reports have noticed a higher incidence of teratoma in the mucinous variant. In our opinion, these apparently divergent results warrant further studies of this rare subtype of ovarian tumor. Keywords: Primary ovarian carcinoid; Carcinoid heart disease; Metastatic ovarian carcinoid