Adenosquamous cervical carcinoma morphological characteristics.

Adenosquamous carcinomas range between 5-25% of cervical cancers and are composed by an admixture of malignant squamous and glandular elements. The aim of our study was to identify some common characteristics and to evaluate the correlation between the degrees of differentiation of the two components. We analyzed 15 cases diagnosed in a 6 years period. The age ranged between 26 years and 67 years (mean age 46.5 years). Paraffin embedding, followed by HE staining were performed. Differential diagnosis with endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the cervix with squamous metaplasia was made. Four cases (26.66%) were subtyped as clear cell adenosquamous carcinomas and 2 cases (13.33%) were subtyped as glassy cell carcinomas, exhibiting finely granular ground glass type cytoplasm. 93.33% of cases exhibited a poorly differentiated squamous component and 66.66% of cases exhibited a well differentiated glandular component. 20% (3 cases) presented prominent lymphoplasmacytic and eosinophilic inflammatory tumoral infiltrate. Squamous intraepithelial lesions in overlying epithelium was observed in 4 cases (26.66%). One case presented extension to the uterine body. One case, diagnosed as glassy cell subtype, presented regional lymph node metastases. Our study concluded the occurrence of adenosquamous cervical carcinomas at a similar age with squamous cervical carcinomas in the investigated group of patients. As adenosquamous cervical carcinomas are considered expressions of a biphasic differentiation of a single pluripotential sub-columnar reserve cell, a similar degree of differentiation of the two components would be expected. Although, we registered a degree of variability in grading of the two components, with a tendency of squamous component toward poorly differentiated aspect and a slightly dominant aspect of well differentiated glandular pattern.