The choice of management for patients with adnexal tumors requires careful pre-surgical assessment. In case of adnexal masses, the diagnostic difficulties arise from the heterogenic nature of the adnexal diseases, presence of multiple functional changes, and lack of early symptoms of malignancy. A reliable pre-surgical differentiation cannot be performed using clinical features, ultrasound examination, or tumor markers alone. New diagnostic techniques and novel markers are under investigations, however no single test can be used to conclusively differentiate between malignant and non-malignant adnexal masses. Mathematical models and scoring systems based on different clinical, ultrasonographic and laboratory parameters alone or together may facilitate the diagnosis. Selected mathematical models and scoring systems are presented in this article. Models using only ultrasound features include simple rules, regression models, Gynecologic Imaging Report and Data System, and various morphologic scores. Some logistic regression models are based on multiple clinical and ultrasound data. The OVA1 test is based on five tumor markers without using other data. The Risk of Malignancy Algorithm uses two tumor markers with one clinical parameter. i.e. the menopausal status. Some models used clinical, ultrasound and tumor marker data together. This group of models includes risk of malignancy indices, artificial neural networks, and the ADNEX model. Although some of these models have been compared in the literature, more prospective studies are needed to select the most effective model, to develop the existing models, or to create new more effective models of oncological assessment of the adnexal tumors.
Keywords: biomarkers; ovarian neoplasms; risk assessment; ultrasonography.