Aims: To investigate whether the presence of serous tubal intraepithelial carcinoma (STIC) is associated with clinical outcomes in a nonselected (unknown BRCA status) cohort of patients with a high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC) of the ovary, fallopian tube, and peritoneum.
Settings and design: A prospective case-series with planned data collection.
Subjects and methods: The study was conducted in a total of 131 patients, who underwent primary cytoreductive surgery between 2007 and 2012. Histological examination of the fallopian tubes included the "sectioning and extensively examining the fimbriated end" protocol. The diagnosis of STIC was based on the combination of morphology and immunohistochemistry. The patients were divided into two groups according to the absence or presence of STIC and compared clinicopathologically.
Statistical analysis used: Analyses were performed using PASW 18 (SPSS/IBM, Chicago, IL, USA) software. The primary outcome was progression-free survival (PFS), and the secondary outcome was overall survival (OS).
Results: STIC was identified in 20.6% of patients. Median follow-up time was 49.5 months for the STIC-positive group and 38.0 months for the STIC-negative group. Study groups were comparable in terms of clinicopathological characteristics with the exception that patients with STIC had less lymph node involvement (55.0% vs. 65.4%, P = 0.001), and more diagnosis of primary tubal carcinoma (29.6% vs. 3.8%, P = 0.001) compared to those without STIC. No statistically significant differences in terms of PFS (P = 0.462) and OS (P = 0.501) were observed between the groups.
Conclusions: The absolute identification of the origin of tumor cell does not seem to significantly affect the clinical course of the patients with HGSC.
Keywords: High-grade serous carcinoma; serous tubal intraepithelial carcinoma; survival.