Volume 62, Issue 1 pp. 89-110
Review

High-grade endometrial carcinomas – strategies for typing

Robert A Soslow

Corresponding Author

Robert A Soslow

Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

Address for correspondence: R A Soslow, Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065, USA. e-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
First published: 13 December 2012
Citations: 53

Abstract

High-grade endometrial carcinomas are subject to low rates of interobserver diagnostic agreement; this may be a result of the existence of morphologically ambiguous carcinomas, many of which are microsatellite instability-high. High-grade endometrial carcinomas with prototypic morphology have characteristic genotypes and immunohistochemical profiles. Assays accounting for these features may be applied to morphologically ambiguous carcinomas in the hope that the results will provide some clarity about a tumour's origin and expected clinical outcome, and even whether tumour progression has occurred. It is important to be able to demonstrate that morphologically based diagnoses are strongly linked not only to clinical outcomes, but also to genetic signatures and expression profiles. There are still numerous persistent problems in tumour classification that will require a critical evaluation of the type and strength of evidence needed to refine diagnostic algorithms.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.