The aim of this study was to determine the sensitivity and the specificity of tumor typing in the prehysterectomy curettage in order to assess the diagnostic accuracy in patients with endometrial cancer. Tumor typing was performed on complete prehysterectomy curettages of 154 patients with endometrial cancer treated during 1987-1991. The results were compared with the histologic findings of the hysterectomy specimen as the gold standard. Patients with no carcinoma demonstrable postoperatively in the removed uterus were excluded from the study. Tumor typing on prehysterectomy curettage revealed only a moderate sensitivity of 46-64%. In contrast, the specificity was > 90% for all histologic subtypes with the exception of the endometrioid tumor type (68%). The histologic subtypes (papillary, adenocarcinoma with squamous differentiation, mucinous, serous papillary, clear cell) achieved similar high predictive values despite a much lower prevalence due to the high values of specificity. Tumor typing of endometrial carcinoma based upon the findings of the prehysterectomy curettage reveals different reliabilities depending on the tumor type.