Gynaecology Pt. 3 Flashcards
What is endometrial cancer?
- MOST COMMON type of uterine cancer
- MOST COMMON gynaecological malignancy
- Age-related incidence = 95/100,000
- Mean age of diagnosis = 62 years
- Arises from glandular component of endometrium
How are endometrial cancers classified?
- Type 1: endometrioid adenocarcinomas
- Oestrogen-driven
- Arise from a background of endometrial hyperplasia
- Type 2: high-grade serous and clear cell carcinomas
- Arise from an atrophic endometrium
Range from Grades 1-3 (3 = high grade)
What is the aetiology of endometrial cancer?
- Oestrogen causes proliferation of endometrial cells
- Progesterone can inhibit this effect
- Obesity is a major risk factor because women who are obese are more likely to have anovulatory menstrual cycles and less likely to get pregnant
- In addition, aromatisation of androgens to oestrogen in adipose tissue provides a continuous postmenopausal supply of oestrogen
What are risk factors for endometrial cancer?
- Obesity
- Diabetes
- Nulliparity
- Late menopause > 52 years
- Unopposed oestrogen therapy
- Tamoxifen therapy (anti-oestrogenic in the breast but stimulatory in the endometrium)
- Family history of colorectal and endometrial cancer
- Lynch syndrome (caused by mutations in mismatch repair genes)
What are protective factors against endometrial cancer?
- Hysterectomy
- COCP
- Progestin-based contraceptives, including injectables
- IUS (Cu-IUD, LNG-IUD)
- Pregnancy
- Smoking
Describe prevention for endometrial cancer
- Hormonal contraceptives and IUDs reduce the risk of ovarian cancer
- Women with Lynch syndrome will be offered prophylactic hysterectomy following completion of family
What are clinical features for endometrial cancer?
- Postmenopausal bleeding
- This is a RED FLAG that should be taken seriously
- Inspect the external genitalia and perform a speculum examination to rule out vulval, vaginal and cervical cancer
- Physical examination may be NORMAL
- Diagnosis can only be excluded with TVUSS, hysteroscopy and endometrial biopsy
- Benign causes of PMB:
- Unscheduled bleeding on HRT
- Atrophic vaginitis
- Abdominal pain
- Urinary dysfunction
- Bowel disturbance
- Respiratory symptoms
- May be detected incidentally on cervical smear (abnormal glandular cytology)
How is endometrial cancer investigated and diagnosed?
- TVUSS
- Allows assessment of endometrial thickness
- If < 4 mm = endometrial cancer is very unlikely
- If > 4 mm = requires further evaluation by hysteroscopy and/or biopsy
- Hysteroscopy
- Performed under local anaesthetic in the outpatient setting where possible
- General anaesthetics may be used if cervical stenosis or if hysteroscopy is poorly tolerated
- A biopsy can be taken for histological analysis
- Complex hyperplasia with atypia is a premalignant condition that often co-exists with low-grade endometrioid tumours of the endometrium
- 25-50% risk of progression to endometrial cancer
How is endometrial cancer staged?
- Determined by MRI
- FIGO staging
- Patients with high-grade tumours will under CT-TAP to exclude distant metastases
What can the management of endometrial cancer be split into?
- Surgery
- Adjuvant Treatment
- Hormone Treatment
What is the surgical management of endometrial cancer?
- Mainstay of treatment for endometrial cancer
- Extent depends on grade, stage and co-morbidities
- Standard surgery: total hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy
- This can be abdominal or laparoscopic
- If the MRI is suggestive of cervical involvement, a modified radical hysterectomy is performed
- If high-grade or type 2 histology, pelvic and para-aortic node dissection may be performed in some centres
What is adjuvant treatment of endometrial cancer?
- Postoperative radiotherapy reduces local recurrent rate but does NOT improve survival
- Local radiotherapy or brachytherapy are options
- Chemotherapy is used for advances or metastatic disease (little evidence to support its use)
What is the hormone treatment of endometrial cancer?
- High-dose oral or intrauterine progestins
- Useful for women with complex atypical hyperplasia and low-grade stage 1A endometrial tumours
- Relapse rates are high
- May be suitable for women who are not fit for surgery or want to avoid surgery for fertility reasons
How does endometrial cancer affect fertility?
- Primary infertility due to PCOS is a risk factor for pre-menopausal endometrial cancer
- Alternatives to hysterectomy for pre-menopausal women are only possible for pre-cancer or early-stage low-grade endometrial cancers
- Hormone therapy (oral progestogens or LNG-IUS) is associated with moderate response and high relapse rates
- Women faces with losing their fertility should be referred to a specialist to discuss ovarian conservation and/or stimulation for egg retrieval and surrogacy
What is the prognosis of endometrial cancer?
- 5-year survival = 80%
- Dependent on type, stage and grade
- Bad prognostic features:
- Age
- Grade 3 tumours
- Type 2 histology
- Deep myometrial invasion
- Lymphovascular space invasion
- Nodal involvement
- Distal metastases
What are sarcomas of the uterus?
- 5% of uterine cancers
- Pure Sarcomas
- Endometrial stromal sarcomas
- Leiomyosarcoma
- From the myometrium
- Rarely associated with malignant transformation of benign fibroids
- Present with rapidly growing pelvic mass and pain
- Surgery is the mainstay of treatment
- Mixed Epithelial Sarcomas (Carcinosarcomas)
- Contain both carcinomatous and sarcomatous elements
- Most present after menopause
- Post-menopausal bleeding
- Treated by surgery followed by post-operative radiotherapy
- Heterologous Sarcomas
- Consists of sarcomatous tissue not usually found in the uterus (e.g. striated muscle, bone and cartilage)
- Most common is rhabdomyosarcoma
- May present in children
- High recurrent rates with distant metastases
What is the aetiology of cervical cancer?
- Low risk HPV = 6 + 13
- High risk HPV = 16 + 18
- 80% of adults show serological evidence of previous HPV infection
- Infection is usually transient with no clinical consequences
- A minority will develop a persistent genital infection that predisposes them to premalignant and malignant change
- Smoking increases the risk of persistent HPV infection
- HIV and immunosuppressed patients are at particular risk of developing cervical cancer
What is the pathophysiology of cervical cancer?
- The tubular cervix consists of stromal tissue covered by:
- Squamous epithelium - in the vagina (ectocervix)
- Columnar epithelium - in the cervical canal (endocervix)
- Endocervix has deep folds (crypts) that are lined by columnar epithelium
- The meeting of the two types of epithelium is the squamocolumnar junction (SCJ)
- The position of the SCJ varies throughout life
- In CHILDREN it lies in the external cervical os
- At PUBERTY it extends outwards onto the ectocervix
- In ADULT LIFE it returns to the external cervical os through the process of metaplasia
- The transformation zone (TZ) is the area between the original SCJ and the current SCJ where the epithelium changes from columnar to squamous over time
- This is the site where malignancy and pre-malignancy develop
- Persistent HPV infection triggers oncogenic processes in the TZ
- Integration of HPV DNA into the basal epithelial cells leads to immortalisation and rapid cellular turnover
- Disordered immaturity within the epithelium is called cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN)
- Immature cells are:
- Hyperchromatic
- Large nuclei
- Minimal cytoplasm
- Abnormal mitotic figures
- Classified as CIN1, CIN2 or CIN3
- CIN2 and 3 are considered ‘high grade’
- Immature cells are:
- Natural History of CIN
- Can regress or progress
- Low-grade disease is more likely to spontaneously regress
- High-grade disease requires treatment (20% risk of progression to cancer)
How is cervical cancer investigated and diagnosed?
- Cervical cytology
- HPV Testing in Cervical screening
- National Cervical Screening Programme
- Colposcopy
What is cervical cytology?
- Liquid-based cytology (LBC) is a technique by which a small brush is used to sample cells from the TZ and the brush head is placed in a fixative
- The cellular aspect from this sample is viewed under the microscope
- Abnormal cervical cytology shows squamous cells at different stages of maturity (dyskaryosis)
- Cervical cytology can be classified as:
- Normal
- Low grade - minor cytological abnormalities showing mild dyskaryosis and or borderline change
- High grade - moderate and severe dyskaryosis
- NOTE: there is some correlation between cytology grade and CIN grade but this is NOT totally reliable
- Cervical cytology allows triaging of patients to the colposcopy clinic for further assessment
- 95% of women will have normal cervical cytology
What is the role of HPV testing in cervical screening?
- High-risk HPV screening improves sensitivity of cervical screening
- It has a high negative predictive value - i.e. if a woman tests negative for high-risk HPV, they have a very low risk of developing cervical cancer
- Women with minor cytological abnormalities undergo reflex testing with high-risk HPV
- Negative - return to routine recall
- Positive - refer to colposcopy
- UK is moving towards primary HPV screening - this means testing all cervical cytology specimens for HPV first, then carrying out reflex cytological assessment on any positive samples