Prediction of histologic type and lymph node metastasis for advanced ovarian cancer on uterine cervical and endometrial cytology.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate usefulness of uterine cervical and endometrial cytology for detecting ovarian cancer and predicting histologic type.

STUDY DESIGN

Retrospective analysis was performed on uterine cervical and endometrial cytology data on 163 patients with ovarian cancer.

RESULTS

Cervical and endometrial abnormalities were detected in 10 and 19 of the patients evaluated. Patients whose cervical and endometrial cytology revealed abnormal cells were classified as having ovarian cancer at International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stages III and IV Peritoneal cytology proved positive in many of the patients with abnormal findings on uterine cytologic analysis. Of the 19 patients with positive uterine cytologic findings, 12 had recurrence of ovarian cancer after radical therapies. Lymph node metastases were detected in 9 of 19 patients. Our findings indicated that it is possible to predict histologic type in ovarian cancer in 90% of cases of positive cervical smears and 79% ofabnormal endometrial smears.

CONCLUSION

Our study showed that most of the ovarian cancer cases that had abnormalities in uterine cervical and endometrial cytologic tests exhibited progression of disease. As a consequence, our findings indicate that it is possible to predict development of ovarian cancer and its histologic type using cytology screening.