PURPOSE:
To analyze the cytological findings of women with cervical adenocarcinoma, taking into account the patient's history in the year prior to diagnosis and the histopathological aspects of the lesions.
METHODS:
A retrospective comparative study was conducted using data from women with cervical adenocarcinoma or squamous carcinoma detected between 2002 and 2008. The cytological reports were synthesized according to the Bethesda System revised in 2001 and were compared to the histopathological findings of cervical adenocarcinoma and squamous carcinoma. The distributions of cytological findings were calculated, as well as the global agreement and chance-corrected agreement using the Cohen's Kappa Coefficient. For this purpose, the cytological findings were grouped according to the epithelial origin, forming the glandular cell and squamous cell groups, with the histopathologically confirmed tumor types (adenocarcinoma versus squamous carcinoma) being used as the gold standard.
RESULTS:
A total of 284 cases of cervical cancer were diagnosed during the study period. The effectively studied cases were 27 and 54 patients with adenocarcinoma and squamous carcinoma, respectively. The adenocarcinoma group represented 9.5% of the total cases diagnosed, and 56.0% of the women in this group were younger than 50 years. Cervical cytology was collected on average 92 days before the cancer diagnosis (range: 19 days to 310 days). In 41.6% of cases the cytological results were consistent with glandular alterations such as adenocarcinoma cells or atypical glandular cells. The global agreement and Cohen's Kappa Coefficient were 73.7 and 48.7%, suggesting substantial and moderate agreement, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS:
In this population, the cytological smears had an important role in screening women with adenocarcinoma, although some of them were referred to clarify the clinical symptoms. The agreement between cytological and histopathological findings was moderate.
Adenocarcinoma/pathology; Vaginal smears; Cervix uteri/pathology; Cell biology; Reproducibility of results