Seromucinous and Mucinous Borderline Ovarian Tumors: We Need to Know More

Borderline ovarian tumor (BOT) is a heterogeneous group of tumors characterized by low malignant potential and atypical proliferation, consisting of 15–20% of all primary ovarian neoplasm. Among BOTs, a subset has a high tendency of relapse probably due to inaccurate subtype stratification and unoptimized care. In this issue of Reproductive Sciences, Wu et al. compared two main BOT subtypes, seromucinous borderline (SMBOT), and mucinous borderline ovarian tumor (MBOT) across many aspects of their clinical pathological features, and identified significant different including tumor growth pattern, tumor sizes, recurrence rate, and the expression Mullerian markers. We reviewed similar work on features of BOT subtypes and highlighted the values added by this study. Future work could be validation with a larger sample size and multicenter design and the application of the identified difference in informing diagnosis and tailored treatment.