Monoarticular carcinomatous knee joint arthritis as an initial presentation of cervical carcinoma

When it comes to cancer, one can expect the unexpected. The clinical presentations can be very bizarre. One of these uncommon presentations is monoarticular arthritis. The age group affected by cancer and arthritis are similar. However, the possibility of joint pain being secondary to metastatic involvement does not come to mind easily. In this report, a 65-year-old postmenopausal woman presented with complaint of pain and restricted movement of the right knee joint, in whom the clinical and magnetic resonance imaging features were suggestive of infective monoarthritis. However, synovial fluid aspirate showed presence of malignant cells. Hence, patient was evaluated with whole-body (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography computed tomography which detected primary malignancy of the cervix with regional nodal and right knee joint metastasis. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of cervical malignancy with solitary skeletal metastasis involving the knee joint. The report also discusses overall incidence of malignant arthritis.