Case report of primary serous adenocarcinoma of fallopian tube - a diagnostic dilemma

Abstract

Historically, primary fallopian tube carcinoma constitutes 0.3% of all cancers of the female genital tract. But literature suggests that the primary fallopian tube carcinoma may be more common. The true incidence of fallopian tube cancer may be underestimated because of the convention of assigning many of these as ovarian cancer when the site of origin is unclear. The preoperative diagnosis is difficult due to the lack of specific symptoms. Fallopian tube carcinoma clinically behaves like epithelial ovarian cancer and histologically similar to it; thus, the evaluation and treatment are essentially the same. We report here a typical case of primary fallopian tube cancer in a 48 year old female diagnosed as ovarian tumour, preoperatively by radiological imaging but was recognized as fallopian tube carcinoma intraoperatively and was confirmed by histopathology.