[Clinical implications of positive peritoneal cytology in endometrial cancer]

To evaluate the clinical significance of positive peritoneal cytology in patients with endometrial cancer.

The records of 315 patients with endometrial cancer who were operated at Cancer Hospital, Fudan University between January 1996 and December 2008 were reviewed. Peritoneal cytology were performed and diagnosed in all patients. Factors related with peritoneal cytology were analyzed by correlation analysis. Log-rank test and Cox regression test was used for the analysis of prognosis, respectively.

(1) Peritoneal cytology were positive in 30 (9.5%) patients. Positive peritoneal cytology was associated with pathological subtype (P = 0.013), stage (P = 0.000), myometrial invasion (P = 0.012), lymph-vascular space invasion (P = 0.012), serosal involvement (P = 0.004), cervical involvement (P = 0.016), adnexal involvement (P = 0.000), and omental involvement (P = 0.000), with no association with grade (P = 0.152) and lymph node metastasis (P = 0.066). (2) Three-year overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were 93.0% and 85.5%, respectively. Positive peritoneal cytology, surgical stage, pathological subtype, myometrial invasion, grade, and lymph-vascular space invasion were significantly associated with worse prognosis by univariate analysis (P < 0.05), while only surgical-pathology stage and myometrial invasion were independent prognostic factors by multivariate analysis (P < 0.05). For 30 cases with positive peritoneal cytology, the patients with no high risk factors shown significantly prognoses better than those with any risk factors. The results shown that for patients with late stage (stage III-IV) endometrial cancer with positive peritoneal cytology was significantly associated with the worse OS and PFS by multivariate analysis (P = 0.006).

Positive peritoneal cytology was associated with serosal involvement, cervical involvement, adnexal involvement, omental involvement, and late stage. Therefore, peritoneal cytology should be performed and reported separately as a part of full surgical staging procedure.