Comparison of IOTA Simple Rules and Subjective Assessment for Differentiation of Ovarian Masses

Preoperative differentiation between benign and malignant ovarian masses is very helpful for decisionmaking since the two entities usually need different therapeutic interventions. For instance benign or functional ovarian cyst need less aggressive approach, only close follow-up or laparoscopic surgery or simple pelvic surgery which can be performed by general practitioners, whereas malignant masses usually need available oncologists or referral to a tertiary center. Several sonographic methods are proposed to differentiate the two conditions, e.g. morphology scoring systems(Sassone et al., 1991; Lerner et al., 1994; Hafeez et al., 2013), or Doppler velocity indices (Tongsong et al, 2009; Alcazar et al., 2011; Guerriero et al., 2011), subjective assessment (Tongsong et al,, 2007), or IOTA (the International Ovarian Tumor Analysis) simple rules(Timmerman et al., 2008) which have been more popular recently. The IOTA simple rules for differentiation between benign and malignant ovarian masses were first proposed in