Skin metastasis from carcinoma of the uterine cervix

Of 1190 patients with carcinoma of the uterine cervix, 15 (1.3%) developed skin metastases. The incidence of skin metastasis was 0.8% in stage I, 1.2% in stage II, 1.2% in stage III, and 4.8% in stage IV. The incidence of skin metastasis seemed to be higher in patients with adenocarcinoma and undifferentiated carcinoma than in patients with squamous cell carcinoma. The interval between the diagnoses of cervical cancer and skin metastasis ranged from 0 to 69 months, with a mean of 16.9 months. The most common sites of skin lesions were the abdominal wall and vulva, followed by the anterior chest wall. Skin lesions presented as nodules in 86.7% (13/15), and 66.7% of the patients had multiple lesions. Skin metastasis was detected as the initial metastatic lesion in 9 patients. However, only 4 patients had neither local recurrence nor other distant metastasis at the time of diagnosis of skin metastasis. The prognosis was grave, but 3 patients survived more than 12 months after the diagnosis of skin metastasis. The main treatment for these patients was extirpation of the skin lesion followed by radiotherapy.