Presenting symptoms of patients with endometrial carcinoma. Effect on prognosis.

The aim of the study was to determine the presenting symptoms of endometrial carcinoma (EC) patients and to assess their possible correlation with some of the standard prognostic factors and with survival. A review of the presenting symptoms of 181 EC patients indicated that 69.6% presented with postmenopausal bleeding while the remaining women presented with irregular bleeding (21.0%), abdominal pain (3.9%) and other (5.5%) symptoms. A significantly (p < 0.001) higher percentage of patients presenting with abdominal pain and other symptoms were diagnosed with advanced stage disease and they had a lower survival than those presenting with post-menopausal or irregular bleeding. Patients presenting with irregular bleeding had a significantly (p = 0.002) better survival than those presenting with postmenopausal bleeding. However, this effect disappeared once age was accounted for in a multivariate analysis. Our findings indicate that the type of presenting symptoms may occasionally serve as a preliminary prognostic indicator.