Abstract
A 41-year-old premenopausal woman presented to our hospital with lower abdominal distention and epigastralgia. An ovarian endometriotic cyst was noted when she was 30 years, and was only followed up until she was 36 years. Suspecting rupture of an ovarian tumor, left adnexectomy was performed. The left ovarian tumor was diagnosed as an ovarian carcinosarcoma of the heterologous type occurring in the endometriotic cyst. The carcinosarcoma was composed of an admixture of high-grade carcinomatous and sarcomatous components, including rhabdomyosarcoma. Thereafter, secondary surgery was concluded, which confirmed the tumor stage to be pT1c3. She postoperatively received 6 cycles of docetaxel/carboplatin as adjuvant chemotherapy and achieved recurrence-free survival for 40 months. Among ovarian carcinosarcomas, cases occurring in endometriotic cysts are particularly rare and may have a relatively good prognosis, because tumor cells, especially sarcoma components, tend to be confined to the ovaries. Pathological estimation of the origin of carcinosarcoma is important, because it appears to correlate with prognosis.
Similar content being viewed by others
Availability of data and materials
The data that support the findings of this case report are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.
References
Pang A, Carbini M, Moreira AL, Maki RG (2018) Carcinosarcomas and related cancers: tumors caught in the act of epithelial-mesenchymal transition. J Clin Oncol 36:210–216
Raza MA, Mazzara PF (2011) Sarcomatoid carcinoma of esophagus. Arch Pathol Lab Med 135:945–948
Usui G, Hashimoto H, Kusakabe M et al (2019) Intrahepatic carcinosarcoma with cholangiocarcinoma elements and prominent bile duct spread. Int J Surg Pathol 27:900–906
Wada H, Enomoto T, Fujita M et al (1997) Molecular evidence that most but not all carcinosarcomas of the uterus are combination tumors. Cancer Res 57:5379–5385
Cherniack AD, Shen H, Walter V et al (2017) Integrated molecular characterization of uterine carcinosarcoma. Cancer Cell 31:411–423
Brown E, Stewart M, Rye T et al (2004) Carcinosarcoma of the ovary: 19 years of prospective data from a single center. Cancer 100:2148–2153
Hollis RL, Croy I, Churchman M et al (2022) Ovarian carcinosarcoma is a distinct form of ovarian cancer with poorer survival compared to tubo-ovarian high-grade serous carcinoma. Br J Cancer 127:1034–1042
Athavale R, Thomakos N, Godfrey K et al (2007) The effect of epithelial and stromal tumor components on FIGO stages III and IV ovarian carcinosarcomas treated with primary surgery and chemotherapy. Int J Gynecol Cancer 17:1025–1030
Bicher A, Levenback C, Silva EG et al (1995) Ovarian malignant mixed müllerian tumors treated with platinum-based chemotherapy. Obstet Gynecol 85:735–739
Asano M, Hasegawa K, Tsukada K et al (2014) A case and literature review of ovarian carcinosarcoma with long-term survival after repeated recurrences. Gan To Kagaku Ryoho 41:1031–1036
Jin Z, Ogata S, Tamura G et al (2003) Carcinosarcomas (malignant mullerian mixed tumors) of the uterus and ovary: a genetic study with special reference to histogenesis. Int J Gynecol Pathol 22:368–373
Lim D, Murali R, Murray MP et al (2016) Morphological and immunohistochemical reevaluation of tumors initially diagnosed as ovarian endometrioid carcinoma with emphasis on high-grade tumors. Am J Surg Pathol 40:302–312
Cooper P (1978) Mixed mesodermal tumor and clear cell carcinoma arising in ovarian endometriosis. Cancer 42:2827–2831
Marchevsky AM, Kaneko M (1978) Bilateral ovarian endometriosis associated with carcinosarcoma of the right ovary and endometrioid carcinoma of the left ovary. Am J Clin Pathol 70:709–712
Macfarlane KT, Pritchard JE (1954) Two cases of Müllerian carcinosarcoma. Am J Obstet Gynecol 68:652–658
Marcella LC, Cromer JK (1959) Mixed mesodermal tumors; a report of 11 cases. Am J Obstet Gynecol 77:275–285
Tsolakian IG, Crim A, Lynn A et al (2021) Endometriosis-associated colorectal carcinosarcoma: a case report and review of the literature. Gynecol Oncol Rep 35:100696
Powell MA, Filiaci VL, Hensley ML et al (2019) A randomized phase 3 trial of paclitaxel (P) plus carboplatin (C) versus paclitaxel plus ifosfamide (I) in chemotherapy-naive patients with stage I-IV, persistent or recurrent carcinosarcoma of the uterus or ovary: An NRG Oncology trial. J Clin Oncol 37:5500
Chandran EA, Kennedy I (2018) Significant tumor response to the poly (ADP-ribose) Polymerase inhibitor olaparib in heavily pretreated patient with ovarian carcinosarcoma harboring a germline RAD51D mutation. JCO Precis Oncol 2:1–4
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the clinical technologists of NTT Medical Center Tokyo for their assistance with the experiments, and Editage (www.editage.jp) for English language editing.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for this report.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
N.S., M.D., and Ma.S. clinically treated this patient, which included surgery; Mi.S., H.H., Y.S., and T.M. were responsible for the pathological diagnosis; and Mi.S. and H.H. prepared the manuscript. All authors have read and approved this manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical approval
An approval is not required for case report in our institutional ethical committee.
Informed consent
Informed consent was obtained from the patient.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
About this article
Cite this article
Sumino, M., Hashimoto, H., Sato, N. et al. Ovarian carcinosarcoma of heterologous type occurring in an endometriotic cyst with 3-year recurrence-free survival: a case report and literature review. Int Canc Conf J 14, 21–26 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13691-024-00728-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Version of record:
Issue date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13691-024-00728-9
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.