The mechanism of the appearance of ovarian cancer cells in cervicovaginal and endometrial smear.

Usefulness of Endometrial Aspiration Cytology for the Preoperative Diagnosis of Ovarian Carcinoma

“…Iwaya et al 11 compared the size of tumor cell clusters appearing in endometrial cytology samples from patients who had either primary ovarian or primary endometrial clear cell adenocarcinoma. They found that none of the tumor cell clusters detected in primary ovarian cancer were larger than 0.5 mm in diameter, supporting the hypothesis of Kato et al 6 Furthermore, Kanda et al 12 performed tubal cytology on patients with ovarian carcinoma who had no endometrial metastasis and who were positive on peritoneal cytology. They found that all three patients with positive tubal cytology were also positive on endometrial cytology, suggesting that ovarian carcinoma cells are likely to migrate to the uterine cavity via the oviducts.…”

Cytologic Study of Ascites and the Endometrium in Ovarian Carcinoma

“…7 In the present study, we concentrated on determining the incidence of migration of ovarian cancer cells into the uterine cavity in the absence of metastasis and on discussing the association of that incidence with such factors as clinical stage, histology and volume of ascitic fluid.…”