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Increasing maternal age is an independent and substantial risk factor for adverse perinatal and obstetric outcomes. These adverse outcomes become more common as increasing maternal age without a clear cutoff age.

Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory disease that can cause pelvic pain and infertility. It usually affects 2% to 10% of women of reproductive age [1]. In 2010, the prevalence of endometriosis in women aged 15 to 49 years was about 1.7 billion worldwide [2]. According to a survey conducted by Statistics Korea, the number of patients who visited the hospital for endometriosis was about 100,000 in 2016 and 120,000 in 2018, and is gradually increasing [3]. With the rising trend of endometriosis, medical expenses are also likely to increase. The annual economic burden of endometriosis, including direct health care costs and indirect productivity loss, was estimated to be 22 billion US dollar (USD) in 2002 and 69.4 billion USD in 2009 in the United States of America [4]. The lack of a gold standard staging system is a concerning issue in the treatment of endometriosis. A reproducible and well-organized classification system is necessary not only to clarify communication

ObjectiveTo investigate the surgical and oncological outcomes of laparoscopic surgery compared with laparotomy for the treatment of early-stage ovarian cancer.MethodsData from patients who underwent surgical management for early-stage ovarian cancer between 2006 and 2012 were retrospectively reviewed. All patients presented with stage I or II disease, and underwent comprehensive staging surgery consisting of a total hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, pelvic and para-aortic lymphadenectomy, omentectomy, and peritoneal cytology.ResultsSeventy-seven patients who underwent laparoscopic surgery (24 patients) or laparotomy (53 patients) were identified. Surgery for none of the patients was converted from laparoscopy to laparotomy. The mean operation time was shorter and the estimated blood loss was lower in the laparoscopy group than in the laparotomy group, though the differences were not statistically significant (193 min vs. 224 min, p=0.127; 698 mL vs. 973 mL, p=0.127). There were no differences in the intraoperative or postoperative complications. During a mean follow-up period of 31 months, tumor recurrence occurred in 4 patients: 2 (8.3%) in the laparoscopy group and 2 (3.8%) in the laparotomy group. The mean disease-free survival was 59 months after laparoscopy and 66 months after laparotomy (p=0.367).ConclusionLaparoscopic surgery seems to be adequate and feasible for the treatment of early-stage ovarian cancer with comparable results to laparotomy in terms of the surgical outcomes and oncological safety.

A boron dipyrromethane (BDP)-containing Pt(II)-Schiff base complex (Pt-BDP), showing ping-pong singlet-triplet energy transfer, was synthesized, and the detailed photophysical properties were investigated using various steady-state and time-resolved transient spectroscopies. Femtosecond/nanosecond transient absorption spectroscopies demonstrated that, upon selective excitation of the BDP unit in Pt-BDP at 490 nm, Förster resonance energy transfer from the BDP unit to the Pt(II) coordination center occurred (6.7 ps), accompanied by an ultrafast intersystem crossing at the Pt(II) coordination center (<1 ps) and triplet-triplet energy transfer back to the BDP moiety (148 ps). These processes generated a triplet state localized at BDP, and the lifetime was 103.2 μs, much longer than the triplet-state lifetime of Pt-Ph (3.5 μs), a complex without the BDP moiety. Finally, Pt-BDP was used as a triplet photosensitizer for triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA) upconversion through selective excitation of the BDP unit or the Pt(II) coordination center at lower excitation energy. An upconversion quantum yield of up to 10% was observed with selective excitation of the BDP moiety, and a large anti-Stokes shift of 0.65 eV was observed upon excitation of the lower-energy band of the Pt(II) coordination center. We propose that using triplet photosensitizers with the ping-pong energy-transfer process may become a useful method for increasing the anti-Stokes shift of TTA upconversion.