Clinico-epidemiological study of endometrial hyperplasia--a risk factor for the development of endometrial carcinoma?

Metaplasia is defined as a transformation of an adult epithelial or conjunctive cellular type into another adult cellular type. Endometrial hyperplasia and particularly complex atypical hyperplasia exposes to a high risk of development of the endometrial carcinoma, being considered a lesion precursory to the same. Endometrial hyperplasias are risk factors for the development of endometrial carcinoma and their prophylaxis implies their accurate diagnosis, taking into account that the adenocarcinomas diagnosed in an advanced stage, whose therapeutic context differs from the early stages, have a much lower chance of survival.

Our study aimed at highlighting objective criteria in establishing the morphological diagnosis and in evaluating the prognostic elements. The studied batch included 875 patients with endometrial hyperplasia and 263 patients with endometrial adenocarcinoma, who were admitted between 2003 and 2007, and the histopathologic diagnosis was obtained by processing the hysterectomy pieces. The presence of this tumour was at its highest level half-way through the study, which was in 2005.

According to the study, there was a higher proportion of patients with endometrial carcinoma from the urban environment (58.2%) than the ones from the rural environment (only 41.8%). Depending on their age, most cases of endometrial adenocarcinoma were diagnosed in 53-year old patients, with an average age of 58.94 years. Our study, made of the two batches of endometrial adenocarcinomas, shows that between the endometrial and non-endometrial adenocarcinoma there are significant differences related to the patients' age, the morphological aspect of the carcinoma, the architectural degree, the nuclear degree of tumours and the invasion in the myometrium.

Our study proves that endometrial hyperplasia is a frequent diagnosis in peri- and postmenopausal patients and is frequently identified following investigations for an abnormal uterine bleeding. The age of patients with endometrial carcinoma is an important prognostic factor independent of other parameters. The difference between complex hyperplasia with no atypias and complex hyperplasia with atypias is important, because atypical complex hyperplasia is considered the precursor of endometrial adenocarcinoma.