A 49-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital because of genital and anal bleeding. The patient was diagnosed as cervical carcinoma (FIGO stage IVa) and treated with radiation therapy. The tumor in the primary site disappeared, but multiple subcutaneous metastases were seen three weeks after the end of the therapy. A sample of a subcutaneous tumor revealed squamous cell carcinoma with high mitotic ratio. Only 31 cases of subcutaneous metastasis from the cervical carcinoma have been reported in the literature. This report describes an additional case of subcutaneous metastasis from cervical cancer.
Xenografts of a human malignant glioma subcutaneously transplanted into nude mice were irradiated with graded single doses (2, 5, 10 or 20 Gy) or five types of fractionation schedules in two weeks: conventional [20 Gy in 10 fractions (fr)], hyperfractionated [24 Gy in 20 fr (two fractions per day)], and hypofractionated‐1, 2, 3 [20 Gy, 18 Gy, 16 Gy in 4 fr]. All of the fractionated irradiation groups showed tumor regression. The hypofractionation‐1 group (20 Gy in 4 fr) demonstrated the most prominent tumor regression, while the hyperfractionation group (24 Gy in 20 fr) showed the least effect. The hypofractionation‐2 group (18 Gy in 4 fr) showed similar regression to the conventional fractionation group (20 Gy in 10 fr). Histologically, tumors in the control groups consisted of a homogenous population of small anaplastic cells, and only a small number of tumor cells were glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)‐positive. Following irradiation, the population of small anaplastic cells decreased and the percentage of GFAP‐positive cells increased. Cellular pleomorphism became much more prominent after irradiation in all of the fractionated irradiation groups as compared with the graded single dose irradiation groups. In this study, hyperfractionation was not effective against human glioma xenografts compared with conventional fractionation and hypofractionation. This indicates that care is needed in applying hyperfractionation regimens to human malignant gliomas.
