Difficulties in Assessing the Depth of Myometrial Invasion in Endometrial Carcinoma

Ali A, Asya Ali, Black D, Destin Black, Robert A. Soslow
International journal of gynecological pathology : official journal of the International Society of Gynecological Pathologists · 2007 · vol. 26(2) , pp. 115–123 · doi:10.1097/01.pgp.0000233165.56385.0b · PMID:17413976 · W1983997374
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 12 in-corpus citations
Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Reassessing 100 endometrial carcinomas revealed discrepancies in myometrial invasion depth measurement in 29% of cases, particularly those with exophytic tumors, irregular junctions, adenomyosis, and smooth muscle metaplasia.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

The depth of myometrial invasion (DMI) is one of the most important prognostic indicators and determinants of therapy in endometrial cancer. There are well-documented problems in recognizing DMI. We examined 100 previously diagnosed endometrioid endometrial carcinomas in hysterectomy specimens, reassessed DMI, and explored morphological features that complicated appraisal of myometrial invasion. The DMI was different from the original measurement in 29% of cases. Twelve percent of all cases (40% of cases with measurement discrepancies) involved differences in the assignment of invasion categories (noninvasive, 50% myometrial invasion). Nearly all endometrial cancers originally diagnosed as invasive were considered noninvasive on review. We examined whether the distribution of stromal metaplasia, noninvasive patterns (exophytic tumors, irregular endomyometrial junctions, and adenomyosis), and myometrial invasion patterns were different in cases with and without measurement discrepancies. Irregular endomyometrial junctions, exophytic tumors, and adenomyosis tended to coexist and were more common in the cases with DMI discrepancies. Although there seemed to be a relationship between smooth muscle metaplasia and exophytic tumors, it did not appear that smooth muscle metaplasia was significantly more common in cases with measurement difficulties. However, cases with extensive smooth muscle metaplasia posed problems with assessment of myometrial invasion. Patterns of myometrial invasion other than the conventional destructive pattern were sufficiently uncommon as to not impact on DMI measurement in large numbers of cases. Measuring the DMI is usually uncomplicated, but additional scrutiny should be paid to cases involving exophytic tumors, irregular endomyometrial junctions, adenomyosis, and extensive stromal smooth muscle metaplasia.
Full text 2,029 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · click to expand
Difficulties in Assessing the Depth of Myometrial Invasion in Endometrial Carcinoma - Asya Ali - Destin Black - Robert A. Soslow Summary: The depth of myometrial invasion (DMI) is one of the most important prognostic indicators and determinants of therapy in endometrial cancer. There are well-documented problems in recognizing DMI. We examined 100 previously diagnosed endometrioid endometrial carcinomas in hysterectomy specimens, reassessed DMI, and explored morphological features that complicated appraisal of myometrial invasion. The DMI was different from the original measurement in 29% of cases. Twelve percent of all cases (40% of cases with measurement discrepancies) involved differences in the assignment of invasion categories (noninvasive, ≤50% myometrial invasion, and >50% myometrial invasion). Nearly all endometrial cancers originally diagnosed as invasive were considered noninvasive on review. We examined whether the distribution of stromal metaplasia, noninvasive patterns (exophytic tumors, irregular endomyometrial junctions, and adenomyosis), and myometrial invasion patterns were different in cases with and without measurement discrepancies. Irregular endomyometrial junctions, exophytic tumors, and adenomyosis tended to coexist and were more common in the cases with DMI discrepancies. Although there seemed to be a relationship between smooth muscle metaplasia and exophytic tumors, it did not appear that smooth muscle metaplasia was significantly more common in cases with measurement difficulties. However, cases with extensive smooth muscle metaplasia posed problems with assessment of myometrial invasion. Patterns of myometrial invasion other than the conventional destructive pattern were sufficiently uncommon as to not impact on DMI measurement in large numbers of cases. Measuring the DMI is usually uncomplicated, but additional scrutiny should be paid to cases involving exophytic tumors, irregular endomyometrial junctions, adenomyosis, and extensive stromal smooth muscle metaplasia.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

adenomyosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometrial Neoplasms Endometrial Stromal Tumors Myometrium Adult Aged Aged, 80 and over Carcinoma, Endometrioid Carcinoma, Endometrioid Cohort Studies Endometrial Neoplasms Endometrial Neoplasms Endometrial Stromal Tumors Endometrial Stromal Tumors Female Humans Middle Aged Myometrium Neoplasm Invasiveness Prognosis Reproducibility of Results

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (30)

Cited by (12)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-08-20T06:14:21.026120+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:15:00.519696+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-08-20T06:30:07.000247+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK