Dedifferentiated endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the uterus: a case report

Dedifferentiated endometrioid adenocarcinoma (DEAC) of the uterus was first described by Silva et al. in 2006. The tumor has high-grade endometrial carcinoma component which abruptly emerged from low-grade areas. DEAC showed more aggressive phenotype than FIGO grade 3 endometrioid adenocarcinoma. However, there have been a few studies evaluating effectiveness of adjuvant therapy for the patients with DEC.

A 41-year-old case with Stage IVB DEAC that clinically showed resistance to several regimens of chemotherapy is reported. The uterine corpus tumor with size of 120 x 100 mm, and the metastases were found in lung, liver, and pelvic lymph nodes. She underwent supra-vaginal hysterectomy, left salpingo-oophorectomy, and partial resection of ileum. Pathologically, the tumor had both well differentiated and undifferentiated carcinoma components, and it was diagnosed as DEAC. After primary surgery, the patient received four regimens of adjuvant chemotherapy, however all regimens were judged as progressive disease. Subsequently, the patient died of disease seven months after surgery.

The present case of DEAC had an exceedingly poor prognosis, as was suggested in the several previous reports. The review of adjuvant therapeutic modalities revealed that there has been no effective therapy in the response-evaluable patients with DEAC. Further investigations for new strategy to treat the cases with DEAC are needed.