Papillary squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix: report of three cases and a review of its classification.

Papillary squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the uterine cervix has been defined as a malignant squamous cell lesion characterized by a papillary architecture with fibrovascular cores and moderate to severe dysplasia devoid of frank keratinization and koilocytic change. Papillary SCC should be histopathologically delineated from other rare variants of SCC with papillary features including verrucous and condylomatous carcinoma and the recently recognized (squamo-)transitional cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix. We report three cases of papillary SCC (FIGO stages IB, IV, and IVB) in postmenopausal women. Each tumor tested was positive for human papillomavirus (HPV) 16 and negative for HPV 6, 11 and 18 by general primer mediated polymerase chain reaction and subsequent enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (PCR-ELISA). These findings 1) support the hypothesis that papillary SCCs (unlike verrucous carcinoma) are similar with regard to risk factors to (squamo-)transitional and condylomatous carcinoma; 2) suggest that HPV may play an etiologic role in at least some of these tumors; and 3) suggest that papillary SCC is the only subtype among squamous/(squamo-)transitional carcinomas that is associated with high-risk HPV infection in the absence of HPV-related histopathologic alterations.