The reliability of preoperative determination of tumour grade in endometrial cancer

Abstract

Endometrial carcinoma is the most common among gynaecological cancers. The most frequent symptom of this disease is postmenopausal bleeding. The diagnosis of endometrial cancer has to be histologically confirmed and there are several methods for endometrial sampling with which we obtain the cells or the endometrial tissue. The reliability of these methods differs. With histologically confirmed diagnosis we determine histological subtype and tumour grade. Those are the two key features that have the most important impact on the probability of disease spread and recurrence, but the most important fact is that they help us to determine the optimal extent of surgical treatment. The reliability of the preoperative determination of tumour grade weakly correlates with the final histological diagnosis, especially with preoperatively diagnosed G1-G2 endometrioid adenocarcinomas, while with G3 carcinomas, which are high-risk histologies, the concordance of the preoperative and postoperative interpretation of the histological findings is much higher.

Keywords

• endometrial cancer
• tumour grade
• preoperative diagnostics