1999 Volume 38 Issue 6 Pages 602-607
Background: Malignant Brenner tumor is a very rare ovarian tumor with the cytological characteristic findings of which remain poorly reported in the literature. We study the cyto-clinicopathology of a case of malignant Brenner tumor.
Case: The patient, a 54 year-old female, complained of lower abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. She had low level ascites in her abdominal cavity and many malignant cells were detected on stab cytology, which seemed to originate from an adenocarcinoma. Two tumor markers, STN (2000 U/ml) and CA 125 (1132 U/ml) were elevated and she had slightly enlarged bilateral ovaries. She therefore underwent bilateral oophorectomy and omentectmy. The tumor was diagnosed as malignant Brenner tumor from histopathological examination. In print cytology of the resected tumor, the cancer cells had round nuclei, a high N/C ratio with large nucleoli and coarse granular chromatin, and they formed clusters with overlapping cells.
Conclusion: These cytological findings were similar to other ovarian adenocarcinomas, so cytological findings alone were not sufficient to diagnose malignant Brenner tumor.
