High prevalence of atypical hyperplasia in the endometrium of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer

Pathologic distribution at the time of interval tumor reductive surgery informs personalized surgery for high-grade ovarian cancer

INTRODUCTION

The surgical approach for interval debulking surgery after neoadjuvant chemotherapy has been extrapolated from primary tumor reductive surgery for high-grade ovarian cancer. The study objective was to compare pathologic distribution of malignancy at interval debulking surgery versus primary tumor reductive surgery.

METHODS

Patients with a diagnosis of high-grade serous or mixed, non-mucinous, epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer who underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy or primary tumor reductive surgery and had at least 6 months of follow-up were identified through tumor registry at a single institution from January 1995 to April 2016. Pathologic involvement of organs was categorized as macroscopic, microscopic, or no tumor. Statistical analyses included Mann-Whitney and Fisher's exact tests.

RESULTS

Of 918 patients identified, 366 (39.9%) patients underwent interval debulking surgery and 552 (60.1%) patients underwent primary tumor reductive surgery. Median age was 62.3 years (range 25.3-92.5). The majority of patients in the interval debulking surgery group were unstaged (261, 71.5%). In the patients who had a primary tumor reductive surgery, 406 (74.6%) had stage III disease. In both groups, the majority of patients had serous histology: 325 (90%) and 435 (78.8%) in the interval debulking and primary tumor reductive surgery groups, respectively. There was a statistically significant difference between disease distribution on the uterus between the groups; 31.4% of the patients undergoing interval debulking surgery had no evidence of uterine disease compared with 22.1% of primary tumor reductive surgery specimens (p<0.001). In the adnexa, there was macroscopic disease present in 253 (69.2%) and 482 (87.4%) of cases in the interval vs primary surgery groups, respectively (p<0.001). Within the omentum, no tumor was present in the omentum in 52 (14.2%) in the interval surgery group versus 91 (16.5%) in the primary surgery group (p<0.001). In the interval surgery group, there was no tumor involving the small and large bowel in 49 (13.4%) and 28 (7.7%) pathologic specimens, respectively. This was statistically significantly different from the small and large bowel in the primary surgery group, of which there was no tumor in 20 (3.6%, p<0.001) and 16 (2.9%, p<0.001) of cases, respectively.

CONCLUSION

In patients undergoing interval debulking surgery, there was less macroscopic involvement of tumor in the uterus, adnexa and bowel compared with patients undergoing primary cytoreductive surgery.

Converging endometrial and ovarian tumorigenesis in Lynch syndrome: Shared origin of synchronous carcinomas

OBJECTIVE

The diagnosis of carcinoma in both the uterus and the ovary simultaneously is not uncommon and raises the question of synchronous primaries vs. metastatic disease. Targeted sequencing of sporadic synchronous endometrial and ovarian carcinomas has shown that such tumors are clonally related and thus represent metastatic disease from one site to the other. Our purpose was to investigate whether or not the same applies to Lynch syndrome (LS), in which synchronous cancers of the gynecological tract are twice as frequent as in sporadic cases, reflecting inherited defects in DNA mismatch repair (MMR).

METHODS

MMR gene mutation carriers with endometrial or ovarian carcinoma or endometrial hyperplasia were identified from a nationwide registry. Endometrial (n = 35) and ovarian carcinomas (n = 23), including 13 synchronous carcinoma pairs, were collected as well as endometrial hyperplasias (n = 56) and normal endometria (n = 99) from a surveillance program over two decades. All samples were studied for MMR status, ARID1A and L1CAM protein expression and tumor suppressor gene promoter methylation, and synchronous carcinomas additionally for somatic mutation profiles of 578 cancer-relevant genes.

RESULTS

Synchronous carcinomas were molecularly concordant in all cases. Prior or concurrent complex (but not simple) endometrial hyperplasias showed a high degree of concordance with endometrial or ovarian carcinoma as the endpoint lesion.

CONCLUSIONS

Our investigation suggests shared origins for synchronous endometrial and ovarian carcinomas in LS, in analogy to sporadic cases. The similar degrees of concordance between complex hyperplasias and endometrial vs. ovarian carcinoma highlight converging pathways for endometrial and ovarian tumorigenesis overall.

The impact of histological subtype in developing both ovarian and endometrial cancer: A longstanding nationwide incidence study

OBJECTIVES

To estimate the incidence of ovarian cancer (OC) and endometrial cancer (EC) separately, as well as double cancers diagnosed in the same calendar year, and to relate the occurrences to histological subtype.

STUDY DESIGN

All cases of epithelial OC and EC diagnosed in the Netherlands in 1989-2009 were related to population data. Histologically specific associations were made using the ratio of observed and expected incidence numbers, calculated with age-specific incidence rates.

RESULTS

25,489 OC and 32,729 EC were analyzed, and 649 OC/EC. Life-time risks for OC and EC were 1.8% and 2.4%. Among OC, adenocarcinoma (18%) and serous cancers (33%) were the most prevalent subtypes. In EC, adenocarcinoma (39%) and endometrioid cancer (37%) were highest, with hardly any serous cancers. The observed incidence of OC/EC was 50-fold higher than expected (95% CI, 46-54). For patients aged <55years, the O/E ratio was 274, for the elderly 32, both findings are significant. Of the 2345 OC endometrioid subtype, 294 had EC (12.5%), whereas 1.1 was expected. In EC patients, no particular histological subtype was distinguished with a highly elevated occurrence of OC. The 680 serous EC patients had 11 double cancers (1.6%), of which 8 with the ovarian serous subtype.

CONCLUSION

Strong relationships exist between malignancies in the ovary and a second primary malignancy in the endometrium, especially for the endometrioid subtype of ovarian cancer. Viewed from the endometrial site, no special subtype was noted, and the influence of endometrial serous adenocarcinoma in developing serous OC is not plausible.

Incidental Serous Tubal Intraepithelial Carcinoma and Non-Neoplastic Conditions of the Fallopian Tubes in Grossly Normal Adnexa: A Clinicopathologic Study of 388 Completely Embedded Cases

Serous tubal intraepithelial carcinoma (STIC), the putative precursor of the majority of extrauterine high-grade serous carcinomas, has been reported in both high-risk women (those with a germline BRCA mutation, a personal history of breast carcinoma, and/or family history of breast or ovarian carcinoma) and average risk women from the general population. We reviewed grossly normal adnexal specimens from 388 consecutive, unselected women undergoing surgery, including those with germline BRCA mutation (37 patients), personal history of breast cancer or family history of breast/ovarian cancer (74 patients), endometrial cancer (175 patients), and a variety of other conditions (102 patients). Among 111 high-risk cases and 277 non-high-risk cases, 3 STICs were identified (0.8%), all in non-high-risk women (high risk vs. non-high risk: P=not significant). STIC was found in 2 women with nonserous endometrial carcinoma and 1 with complex atypical endometrial hyperplasia. Salpingoliths (mucosal calcifications), found in 9% of high-risk cases, and fimbrial adenofibromas in 9.9% of high-risk cases, were significantly more common in high-risk as compared with non-high-risk women (1.8% and 2.5%, respectively; P<0.007). Mucinous metaplasia was found in 3.1%, salpingitis isthmica nodosa in 3.4%, hemosiderin or pseudoxanthoma cells in 4.9%, and fibrous luminal nodules in 4.1%. None of these latter features differed significantly in the high-risk versus non-high-risk groups. These findings suggest a possible association between STIC and endometrial hyperplasia and carcinoma, and clarify the frequency of non-neoplastic tubal findings in grossly normal fallopian tubes.