Correlation between preoperative endometrial sampling and final endometrial cancer histology

Objective: We conducted a study to evaluate the correlation between pre-operative endometrial sampling to the final endometrial cancer histology, in particular the non-endometrioid subtypes. Methods: This involved 191 hysterectomy specimens of patients undergoing treatment at the Pan-Birmingham Gynaecological Regional Cancer Centre (BGCC) over a two-year period (2006-2007). Results: The majority of the patients in this study were found to have endometrioid histology subtype (140/191, 73%). However, the non-endometrioid histologic subtypes were well presented in our population (51/191, 27%). We found good correlation for endometriod histology subtype (78%) and certain types of the non-endometrioid cell types (carcinosarcoma 90%, uterine papillary serous carcinoma 67%, clear cell carcinoma 67%) but poor in sarcomas (40%). Our results also demonstrated that both pre-operative endometrial sampling methods (curettage and pipelle biopsy) were reliable in identifying endometrioid and non-endometrioid cancer cell types, with sensitivities of 96.5% and 86.5%, respectively. Conclusion: We concluded that preoperative endometrial sampling had good overall histological correlation to hysterectomised corpus specimen. This is especially so for the endometrioid and certain subtypes of the non-endometrioid endometrial cancer cells.

Complex atypical hyperplasia; Endometrial carcinoma; Endometrial sampling; Post menopausal bleeding

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