Precocious Solitary Cervical Metastasis from Endometrial Cancer Presenting as Cervical Radicular Pain

Background: Bone metastases from endometrial cancer are rare. To our knowledge, only 2 cases of solitary vertebral metastases from endometrial cancer presenting with osseous and/or neurologic symptoms before the diagnosis of the primary endometrial cancer have been reported; however, in both cases, the metastases were thoracic. Thus, cervical vertebral metastases are extremely rare.

Case description: We describe the case of a 55-year-old woman who presented with right C6 radicular and neck pain. Neurologic imaging showed destruction of the C6 vertebral body by an extradural mass with kyphotic changes in the cervical spine. Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography showed increased uptake in the enlarged body of the uterus as well as the C6 vertebral body. Additional pelvic magnetic resonance images and endometrial biopsy confirmed endometrial cancer. The patient underwent excision of the cervical tumor with anterior reconstruction and posterior fixation followed 1 month later by semiradical hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy with pelvic and para-aortic lymph node dissection. The cervical and endometrial histopathologic findings were similar, and the final diagnosis made was cervical metastatic adenocarcinoma originating from an endometrial cancer.

Conclusions: We describe an extremely rare case of a precocious solitary cervical metastasis from an endometrial cancer presenting as cervical radicular pain. In our review of published reports, we found that solitary spinal metastases are significantly associated with longer overall survival than are multiple lesions. Resection of the spinal lesion with rigid spinal reconstruction followed by radical hysterectomy may be beneficial in such patients.