Microscopic lesions of fallopian tubes in endometrioid carcinoma of the endometrium: How effective are the macroscopic tubal sampling techniques?

OBJECTIVE

Extrauterine involvement of endometrial carcinoma has a significant effect on the patients' prognosis and treatment decision. In classical method, macroscopic section is taken from the fallopian tube sparing the fimbrial ends. Fimbrial end of fallopian tube may be involved by tumors and precursor lesions. This study aims to determine the importance of sampling of fimbrial ends of fallopian tube in endometrioid endometrial carcinoma specimens.

METHODS

We reevaluated the fallopian tubes of 200 cases of endometrioid endometrial carcinoma cases that have no macroscopic tubal lesion. A hundred cases were sampled with classical method, and the other 100 were sampled with a new method that includes the fimbrial ends. Statistical difference was examined by Fisher's exact test.

RESULTS

No microscopic tubal lesion lesion was detected in cases that were sampled with the classical method. In contrast, there were 4 cases with tubal lesions in patients sampled with the new technique; 3 of them were located in the fimbrial end. Of the 3, there was one microscopic invasive carcinoma and two proliferative endometrial glandular lesions. Endometriosis was detected in two of the 4 cases with tubal lesions.

CONCLUSION

Including the fimbrial end of fallopian tube to macroscopic sampling could detect more tubal lesions, which might provide additional prognostic and pathogenetic information of endometrioid endometrial carcinoma.