Comparison of clinical and surgical-pathologic staging in patients with endometrial carcinoma

In that accurate staging is essential to proper management of patients with endometrium cancer, preoperative clinical staging was compared with surgical-pathological staging in 160 patients with endometrium cancer. One hundred fifty-two patients had clinical stage I, and eight had clinical stage II disease. Overall, the clinical stage was changed in 26.9% of patients. The incidence of inaccurate staging was 25% for clinical stage I and 62.5% for clinical stage II disease. Endocervical curettage was found to have a 12.5% false-positive rate and an 8.6% false-negative rate. The extent of malignant disease for endometrium cancer (clinical stages I-II) cannot be adequately and accurately assessed with clinical staging because there is a high rate of discordance between clinical and surgical-pathologic staging.