Peritoneal cytology in endometrial carcinoma.

Peritoneal cytology is accepted as part of the evaluation for patients undergoing laparotomy for a suspected or proven gynecologic malignancy. The study subjects were 83 patients with endometrial carcinoma. We investigated the significance of peritoneal cytology in endometrial carcinoma. Cytological positive results were observed in 11 (23%) of the 48 T1 cases, 9 (50%) of the 18 T2 cases and 4 (50%) of the 8 T3 cases. Cytological positive rates by histological differentiations were 14 (28%) for 50 G1 cases, 4 (36%) for 11 G2 cases and 6 (46%) for 13 G3 cases. Cytological positive results were found in 11 (28%) of 39 cases of less than 1/3 of intramuscular infiltration and 13 (37%) of 35 cases of 1/3 or more infiltration. Five (56%) of 9 metastasis cases and 17 (29%) of 59 nonmetastasis cases were found positive cytologically. An analysis of the data indicated that the influence of positive peritoneal cytology on recurrence superceded that of other known risk factors, such as grade, myometrial invasion, extrauterine disease, and lymph node metastasis. The patients with normal cytological findings at laparotomy tend to have a significantly (p less than 0.01) better prognosis than similar patients with abnormal cytological findings.