To review the clinical features, histological types and the mode of treatment of malignant gynecologic tumors in childhood and adolescence, and to analyze the survival according to the histologic types.

We analyzed clinicopathologic data for 29 patients aged less than 20 years who were referred to Dept. of Ob/Gyn in SNUH for the years Jan. 1986 through Mar. 1999.

Of the 29 cases, 26 cases were ovarian malignancy, 2 metastatic cancers from other organs, and 1 uterine adenosarcoma. Of the 26 ovarian malignancy, histologic distrubutions were follows: 18(69%) cases were germ cell tumor, 7(27%) epithelial ovarian cancers, l(4%) stromal cell tumors. Main symptoms of the patients were abdominal pain(41.4%), abdominal distension(24.1%), and palpable mass(17.2%). The stage of the 20 cases (80%) with the ovarian malignancy was the stage 1. The most frequent treatment modality was the USO(ineluding contralateral wedge biopsy) and postoperative chemotherapy(83%). Five-year survival rate of the patients with germ cell tumor was 83% and that of the patients with epithelial ovarian malignancy was 38%, but the numbers of the cases was too small to get a statistical significance(P>0.05).

Ovarian malignancy, especially germ cell tumor, was the most frequent tumors of the gynecologic malignancies developed in childhood and adolescence and mainly the stages of the cases were stage 1. Our data showed the trend that the survival rate of the patients with the germ cell tumors was better than that of the patients with the epithelial ovarian cancer. Larger scaled analysis is needed to get a final conclusion.