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Endometrial adenocarcinoma--lack of correlation between treatment delay and tumor stage
E C Pirog1, D S Heller, C Westhoff
1Department of Pathology, College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, New York 10032, USA.
Objective:
The objective was to examine why a proportion of patients with endometrioid adenocarcinoma (EMC) presents with advanced stage disease and whether the duration of bleeding prior to hysterectomy (treatment delay) is predictive of stage.
Study Design:
A retrospective clinicopathologic study of 182 patients treated for EMC at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City between 1988 and 1996 was performed.
Results:
Ninety percent of patients with EMC presented with abnormal uterine bleeding. The median time interval from onset of bleeding to biopsy diagnosis was 2.5 months (range, 2 weeks to 60 months) and 3 weeks from biopsy to hysterectomy. No correlation between the duration of symptoms and tumor stage was found (P = 0.87). There was, however, significant correlation between poor tumor differentiation and the advanced stage of the disease (P = 0.0001).
Conclusions:
Stage at presentation in patients with EMC correlates with tumor differentiation but not with time interval from bleeding to definitive therapy.