A Patient With a Noninvasive Mucinous Ovarian Borderline Tumor Presenting With Late Pleural Metastases:

A Novel Case of Recurrent Mucinous Borderline Ovarian Tumor: Early Relapse and Fatal Outcome

Unlike ovarian carcinomas, borderline ovarian tumors (BOTs) are associated with a favorable prognosis: their recurrence rate is around 5–7%, and the survival rate is more than 97% when diagnosed early. There are only a few reports of recurrence and fatal outcomes. Herein, we report a novel case of recurrent mucinous BOT, with a literature review. A 63-year-old woman presented to a local doctor with abdominal fullness. She was diagnosed as having a polycystic tumor. The lesion was suspected to be a mucinous BOT (M-BOT) on magnetic resonance imaging. Upper and lower gastrointestinal endoscopy revealed no digestive cancerous lesions, and surgery was performed. Intra-operative diagnosis confirmed the diagnosis, and total abdominal hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, and omentectomy were performed. The final pathological diagnosis was non-invasive M-BOT (stage I c1 (T1c1N0M0)). The result of immunohistochemical staining supported the diagnosis of primary ovarian mucinous tumor.Four months after surgery, relapse occurred. Blood tests revealed an elevated carbohydrate antigen 19-9 level, and computed tomography revealed multiple liver metastases, peritoneal dissemination, left ureter infiltration, and carcinomatous peritonitis. Although the patient underwent chemotherapy, she died. This case of a very short progression-free and overall survival in stage I M-BOT indicates that some M-BOTs could result in fatal clinical outcomes despite diagnosis at an early stage. Frequent follow-up appointments after surgery could help detect relapse and increase survival in such cases.

Refined cut-off for TP53 immunohistochemistry improves prediction of TP53 mutation status in ovarian mucinous tumors: implications for outcome analyses

TP53 mutations are implicated in the progression of mucinous borderline tumors (MBOT) to mucinous ovarian carcinomas (MOC). Optimized immunohistochemistry (IHC) for TP53 has been established as a proxy for the TP53 mutation status in other ovarian tumor types. We aimed to confirm the ability of TP53 IHC to predict TP53 mutation status in ovarian mucinous tumors and to evaluate the association of TP53 mutation status with survival among patients with MBOT and MOC. Tumor tissue from an initial cohort of 113 women with MBOT/MOC was stained with optimized IHC for TP53 using tissue microarrays (75.2%) or full sections (24.8%) and interpreted using established criteria as normal or abnormal (overexpression, complete absence, or cytoplasmic). Cases were considered concordant if abnormal IHC staining predicted deleterious TP53 mutations. Discordant tissue microarray cases were re-evaluated on full sections and interpretational criteria were refined. The initial cohort was expanded to a total of 165 MBOT and 424 MOC for the examination of the association of survival with TP53 mutation status, assessed either by TP53 IHC and/or sequencing. Initially, 82/113 (72.6%) cases were concordant using the established criteria. Refined criteria for overexpression to account for intratumoral heterogeneity and terminal differentiation improved concordance to 93.8% (106/113). In the expanded cohort, 19.4% (32/165) of MBOT showed evidence for TP53 mutation and this was associated with a higher risk of recurrence, disease-specific death, and all-cause mortality (overall survival: HR = 4.6, 95% CI 1.5-14.3, p = 0.0087). Within MOC, 61.1% (259/424) harbored a TP53 mutation, but this was not associated with survival (overall survival, p = 0.77). TP53 IHC is an accurate proxy for TP53 mutation status with refined interpretation criteria accounting for intratumoral heterogeneity and terminal differentiation in ovarian mucinous tumors. TP53 mutation status is an important biomarker to identify MBOT with a higher risk of mortality.