Signs and symptoms associated with uterine cancer in pre- and postmenopausal women

Abstract

Uterine cancer is the most and second most common gynecological malignancy in developed and developing countries, respectively. The majority of endometrial cancers are diagnosed early due to the presence of abnormal uterine bleeding. The existing literature however contains only little data regarding the prevalence of such symptoms compared to patients with no or benign pathology. Therefore, a systematic review was conducted in order to determine the significance of various clinical signs and symptoms predicting uterine cancer. Embase, Web of Science and Medline databases were searched from inception until 18 June 2019. Studies eligible for selection inclusion assessed the diagnostic accuracy of clinical signs and symptoms in pre- and postmenopausal women aged 18-99 years old with uterine malignancy. Case reports, case series and studies of which full text was not available, were excluded. The risk of bias was assessed using the QUADAS-2 tool by two independent reviewers. Results were visualized by forest plots using RevMan(5.3). Forty-one studies were eventually included in this systematic review. Abnormal uterine bleeding occurring in pre-, post- and perimenopausal women was proven to be the most widely investigated symptom in relation to cancer of the uterus. Thirty-two articles examined patients with postmenopausal bleeding of which sensitivity and specificity varied between 0.28 to 0.86 and 0.63 to 0.84, respectively. Abnormal bleeding in pre- and perimenopausal women on the other hand showed a sensitivity ranging from 0.63 to 0.81. Its specificity could not be calculated due to missing data. Other symptoms appeared not sufficiently examined to assess their diagnostic accuracy range. This review highlights the current lack of knowledge regarding the diagnostic accuracy of several signs and symptoms for uterine cancer. After a thorough in-depth review of the literature, meta-analysis could not be performed due to the absence of control populations in the majority of articles. Further research is needed to establish the rule-in or rule-out value of specific clinical signs to identify patients at risk for uterine malignancy prompting further clinical assessment.

Keywords: Diagnostic accuracy; Diagnostics; Health promotion; Obstetrics & gynecology; Oncology; Quality of life; Sign; Symptom; Uterine cancer.

Figure 1

PRISMA Flow chart.

Figure 2

Summary of sensitivity & specificity of investigated symptoms and corresponding authors given 2 × 2 tables were fully reproducible.

Figure 3

Summary of sensitivity & specificity of postmenopausal bleeding and corresponding authors given 2 × 2 tables were fully reproducible.