paywalled: Diathermy-Induced Injury May Affect Detection of Occult Tubal Lesions at Risk-Reducing Salpingo-Oophorectomy

Diathermy: In the natural sciences, the term diathermy means "electrically induced heat" and is commonly used for muscle relaxation. It is also a method of heating tissue electromagnetically or ultrasonically for therapeutic purposes in medicine.

Diathermy-Induced Injury May Affect Detection of Occult Tuba... : International Journal of Gynecological Cancer

Background: Electrosurgery-induced tubal thermal injury obscures cellular detail and hampers histomorphological assessment for occult pathology.

Objective: 

The objectives of this study were to report on diathermy-related thermal injuries to the fallopian tube observed at RRSO and explore its potential impact on the detection of occult tubal epithelial lesions.

Design: 

This study was composed of high-risk women from breast and/or ovarian cancer families attending a tertiary high-risk familial gynecologic cancer clinic. This was a retrospective case-control analysis of high-risk women who underwent RRSO. Cases were all women detected to have occult lesions (tubal atypia/carcinoma in situ/cancer) between January 2005 and December 2010. Control subjects were all women with normal tubal/ovarian histology between August 2006 and December 2007.

Conclusions: This report highlights the potential impact of electrosurgical thermal injury on detection of occult tubal pathology following RRSO. It is important for surgeons to avoid thermal injury to the distal end of the tube.