Abstract
The incidence of ovarian cancer in our country is currently rising - in 2004 it reached 24.2 cases per 100,000 women (Figure 1). In Western European countries, where hormonal contraception has been used extensively for more than 20 years, the incidence of these malignancies is beginning to decline.
In the Czech Republic, we can expect a decline in about 10 years. Despite the downward trend (it has decreased by about 10% in the last 10 years), mortality is still high, mainly because we diagnose most ovarian tumors (75-80%) in advanced stages (III and IV).
Ovarian tumors are the most common cause of death among gynecological tumors (in absolute numbers). For clinical use, we divide ovarian tumors into two groups: epithelial and non-epithelial.
The main group is epithelial malignancies (carcinomas), which make up approximately 90%. The age distribution is shown in Figure 2.
The mean age in both groups of patients with ovarian cancer differs significantly, in the group with epithelial cancers the average age at the time of diagnosis is 57 years, in the group with non-epithelial cancers 33 years.