High grade serous carcinoma of the ovary with a yolk sac tumour component in a postmenopausal woman: report of an extremely rare phenomenon
"High grade serous carcinoma is the most common ovarian epithelial malignancy.1 Ovarian yolk sac tumours (YST) are much more uncommon and are morphologically heterogeneous, primitive teratoid neoplasms
differentiating into multiple endodermal structures.2
They almost always occur before age 30 and are extremely rare in
perimenopausal and postmenopausal women.
Rare examples have
been reported in elderly patients,
sometimes associated with an ovarian surface epithelial-stromal tumour,
most commonly endometrioid
adenocarcinoma but occasionally
carcinosarcoma, clear cell carcinoma or a mucinous neoplasm; rarely the
epithelial component
is benign.3–13
In a review of the literature, we have identified 18 ovarian neoplasms
exhibiting a combination of YST and a surface epithelial-stromal
tumour.3–13
The combination of endometrioid adenocarcinoma and YST should be
distinguished from YST with endometrioid-like glands
(‘pseudoendometrioid’
YST).
