OBJECTIVE: To examine the patterns of estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) expression in borderline ovarian tumors (BOTs) and ovarian carcinomas. We also assessed the disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in women with ovarian carcinoma, in relation to ER and/or PR expression. METHODS: We examined ER/PR expression in 38 BOTs and 172 ovarian carcinomas removed from patients treated at the State University of Campinas-UNICAMP (Brazil), from 1993 to 2008 and followed for up to 60 months using tissue microarray-based immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: Twenty-eight (73.7%) mucinous and 10 (26.3%) serous BOTs were included. Ovarian carcinomas consisted mainly of 79 (46.0%) serous, 44 (25.5%) mucinous, 17 (9.8%) endometrioid, 10 (5.8%) clear-cell types. There was no significant difference of the ER/PR expression between BOT and ovarian carcinoma (p=0.55 for ER alone, 0.90 for PR alone, and 0.12 for combined expression). The level of ER/PR expression in BOTs was significantly higher in serous than in mucinous tumors (p<0.01). In carcinomas, ER/PR was higher in serous tumors than in mucinous (p<0.01) and clear cell tumors (p=0.02), and higher in endometrioid tumors than in mucinous tumors (p<0.01). DFS was affected neither by the clinical characteristics nor by combined steroid receptor status. OS was found to be significantly worse (p<0.01) only in women with stages II-IV tumors and those with residual disease after surgery (p<0.01). CONCLUSION: Overall, serous and endometrioid tumors were predominantly ER/PR positive, whereas mucinous and clear-cell tumors were preponderantly ER/PR negative. DFS and OS were not affected by ER/PR expression.
Disease-Free Survival ; Estrogens ; Female ; Humans ; Immunohistochemistry ; Mucins ; Progesterone ; Receptors, Progesterone ; Receptors, Steroid

Sentinel lymph node biopsy has been developed as the standard of treatment in breast cancer. Status of axillary sentinel lymph node is known to be a significant prognostic factor. Nevertheless, involvement of an intramammary lymph node with metastasis in breast cancer is a rare radiological and clinical presentation, and with extracapsular extravasation even more uncommon. Historically, reported series of patients with intramammary lymph node diagnosed by final histological examination are small in number and clinical significance of metastasis is still unclear. Here, we report a case of conservative breast cancer surgery with 3 intramammary sentinel lymph nodes containing metastasis and extracapsular extravasation. After multidisciplinary consensus, the patient was surgically reapproached with mastectomy. Even though the 3 intramammary sentinel lymph nodes were positive for metastases, pathology examination did not reveal any signs of malignancy in the mastectomy specimen.
Breast Neoplasms* ; Breast* ; Consensus ; Humans ; Lymph Nodes* ; Lymphatic Metastasis ; Mastectomy ; Neoplasm Invasiveness ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Pathology ; Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy