Background: Primary serous-papillary peritoneal carcinoma is able to spread to the retroperitoneal lymph nodes, but there is no evidence of the pattern of lymphatic metastasis. Because of the fact that this tumor entity is indistinguishable histologically from primary serous-papillary ovarian carcinoma, its taxonomic position has thus far remained unclear.
Materials and methods: The Medline database was used to identify studies about lymphatic spread pattern and to compare those studies.
Results: Four out of the fifteen studies were selected. Each based their analysis on a different classification of the pelvic and para-aortal lymph nodes; 63.9% of the women with primary serous-papillary peritoneal carcinoma had retroperitoneal lymph node involvement.
Conclusion: Metastasis of primary serous-papillary peritoneal carcinoma to retroperitoneal lymph nodes is not an infrequent occurrence, but there is no evidence of a distinct pattern of spread.