Femur metastasis in carcinoma of the uterine cervix: a rare entity.

PURPOSE: We report the first case of isolated femur metastasis in a locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC) patients. CASE: A 40-year-old woman presenting with carcinoma of the uterine cervix, FIGO stage IIb was administered concomitant chemo-radiation and achieved clinical partial response. Before the planned surgery, she developed an isolated metastatic lytic lesion of the left femur. After surgical excision of metastasis, she refused palliative chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, and died 3 months later because of progression of the disease. CONCLUSION: Bone metastasis is not so infrequent in patients with LACC. Because the prognosis of these patients is poor and most of them die within 1 year after the diagnosis of metastatic disease, the policy of treatment should be directed to maintain their quality of life.

Prognostic role of the recepteur d'origine nantais (RON) expression in ovarian cancer patients.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to investigate the potential clinical relevance of immunohistochemically assessed RON expression in a large, single institution series of primary untreated advanced ovarian cancer patients. METHODS: Immunohistochemical analysis was performed by using the polyclonal rabbit anti-RON-beta antibody (C-20, clone sc-322, Santa Cruz, California). Results were expressed as the total proportion of immunostained tumor cells (RON positivity), or the percentage of cells showing strong staining of RON expression (H-RON positivity). RESULTS: In the overall series RON positive immunoreaction was observed in 103/141 cases, while H-Ron positivity was detected in 577141 (40.4%) cases. No association between RON and H-RON expression with response to first-line treatment was documented. During the follow up period, progression and death of disease were observed in 111 (78.7%) and 76 (53.9%) cases, respectively. Cases with strong H-RON expression has a shorter overall survival (median=35 months) than cases with low RON levels (median=59 months) (X(2)=-2.1, p value=0.032). In multivariate analysis, only platinum resistance, and extent of residual tumor retained an independent negative prognostic role for OS, with the percentages of H-RON positively immunostained cells showing a borderline statistical significance (p value=0.0643). The unfavourable role of elevated percentages of H-RON expression was maintained only in the subgroup of platinum resistant recurrent ovarian cancer patients (X(2)=3.89, p value=0.048) compared to the platinum sensitive ones (X(2)=1.98, p value=0.16). CONCLUSIONS: The assessment of RON expression deserves further attention as a parameter helpful to identify poor prognosis ovarian cancer patients potentially candidates to investigational agents.