Case Report
Late Isolated Central Nervous System Relapse from Ovarian
Serous Adenocarcinoma: A Case Report and Literature Review
Tiago Biachi de Castria,
1
Sylvia Regina Quintanilha Rodrigues,
2
and Maria del Pilar Estevez Diz
1
1
Department of Medical Oncology, Instituto do Cancer do Estado de Sao Paulo, 251 Doutor Arnaldo Avenue,
01246-000 Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil
2
Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Sao Paulo, 455 Doutor Arnaldo Avenue, 01246-000 Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil
Correspondence should be addressed to Tiago Biachi de Castria; tiagobiachi@yahoo.com.br
Received 5 August 2014; Revised 4 November 2014; Accepted 4 November 2014; Published 18 November 2014
Academic Editor: Kaei Nasu
Copyright © 2014 Tiago Biachi de Castria et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
Central nervous system involvement by ovarian serous adenocarcinoma is rare. We report a case of a 60-year-old woman that
developed brain metastasis as isolated site of relapse 4.5 years ater a complete resection and adjuvant chemotherapy for a
stage Ic disease. She proceeded to a craniotomy with resection of the lesion and, subsequently, to a whole brain radiotherapy.
Nineteen months later, she developed carcinomatous meningitis as isolated site of recurrence. Patient was submitted to intrathecal
chemotherapy with methotrexate; however, she died from progressive neurologic involvement disease few weeks later.
1. Introduction
Ovarian cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer
in United States: in 2014, 24,000 new cases and 14,000
deaths are expected [1]. Worldwide 240,000 new cases and
150,000 deaths were expected in 2012 [2]. Despite being a
rare disease when compared to other tumors and treatment
improvement with chemotherapy, mortality from ovarian
cancer has remained high over the past 4 decades (5-year
survival rate 33% in 1975 and 45% in 2006) [1].
Late diagnosis and recurrence are common in epithe-
lial ovarian cancer (EOC); however, central nervous sys-
tem (CNS) is the site of recurrence in only 1-2% of the
cases [3, 4]. Usually, relapses occur through peritoneal or
lymphatic spread and rarely hematogenous dissemination
beyond abdominal caveat is present. Among patients who
developed isolated brain metastases (BM), 75% occur in
advanced tumors (International Federation of Gynecology
and Obstetrics, FIGO III-IV), which can be explained by
the control of abdominal disease by current regimens of
chemotherapy with low CNS penetration [3].
Since BM from EOC is a rare condition, medical knowl-
edge is limited to case reports or series of patients and less
than 600 cases are documented to date in the literature [5].
Once systemic treatment is improving survival in meta-
static patients and, probably, treating with more eicacy
micrometastatic disease in adjuvant scenario, CNS metastasis
(CNSm) from EOC is likely to have more relevance in clinical
practice in the future. herefore, it becomes important to
understand this condition, to estimate prognostic factors and
to determine the intensity of local and systemic treatment.
2. Case Report
he patient is female, 60y, with no comorbidities, with a 2-
month history of abdominal pain and rectal bleeding. She
was submitted to proctosigmoidoscopy and computerized
tomography (CT) scans of abdomen and pelvis that revealed
an iniltrative lesion in anal canal and a right adnexal mass
with no evidence of peritoneal carcinomatosis or lymph
nodes enlargement. A transvaginal ultrasound conirmed
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Case Reports in Obstetrics and Gynecology
Volume 2014, Article ID 297307, 5 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/297307