[Incidence of the risk factors age and obesity in patients with endometrial hyperplasia].

This investigation pursued the question of how many patients with precancerous endometrial hyperplasia were not recommended for screening programs solely because of the lack of risk factors. The median age of precancerous hyperplasia patients in Erlangen is 54, 8 years before the median age for endometrial carcinoma. Just under 10% (8.5%) of precancerous endometria occur before the age of 45. Only 18.3% of all precancerous patients do not suffer from overweight. Because age and adiposity were missing from the list of risk factors, one quarter (23.9%) of the women studied in Erlangen had not been included in a screening program. One-fifth (19.1%) of the precancerous stages in the risk patients would not be determined cytologically because nuclear criteria were either missing or deeply situated. Consequently, a minimum failure rate of 38.5% for precancerous patients must be reckoned with when using a cytological screening routine with risk patients. In the period under study, it is surprising to note that six times as many endometrial carcinoma as precancerous endometrial were treated. There is no universally suitable treatment for all precancerous patients. Certainly, an individualized, conservative form of treatment would seem to offer more hope of success than surgical therapy, which would always be aggressive.