Krukenberg tumor

Krukenberg tumors can be seen in all age groups, with an average age of 45 years.

Krukenberg tumors are often (over 80%) found in both ovaries, consistent with its metastatic nature.

The optimal treatment of Krukenberg tumors is unclear.

Stomach cancer often metastasises to the ovary in women, then it is called a Krukenberg tumor.

Since Krukenberg tumors are secondary (metastatic), management might logically be driven by identifying and treating the primary cancer.

Immunohistochemistry may help in diagnosing Krukenberg tumors from primary ovarian neoplasms but needs to be applied with discretion.

The average age of diagnosis of Krukenberg tumors may partly relate to the relatively increased vascularity of the ovaries.

In people who have had nongynecologic malignancy, approximately 20% of adnexal masses are malignant, and 60% of these are Krukenberg tumors.

Krukenberg tumors often come to the attention when they cause abdominal or pelvic pain, bloating, ascites, or pain during sexual intercourse.

In cases where gastric signet cell carcinoma metastasizes, it tends to spread to peritoneal metastases, lymphatic permeation of the lungs, and to the ovaries, creating Krukenberg tumors.

(A common mistake is to name all peritoneal metastases from any gastrointestinal cancer as a Krukenberg tumor, but this is only the case if it originates from primary gastric cancer).

A Krukenberg tumor refers to a malignancy in the ovary that metastasized from a primary site, classically the gastrointestinal tract, although it can arise in other tissues such as the breast.

Microscopically, Krukenberg tumors are often characterized by mucin-secreting signet-ring cells in the tissue of the ovary; when the primary tumor is discovered, the same signet-ring cells are typically found.

At Marburg he also studied under pathologist Felix Jacob Marchand (1846-1928), in whose department he described a fibrosarcoma of the ovary that was to become known as a Krukenberg tumor.

Krukenberg tumors account for about 15% of metastatic cancers that initially appear to have arisen in the ovary, and as such is less common than metastasis arising from ovarian epithelial and germ-cell tumors.

Krukenberg tumors are named after Friedrich Ernst Krukenberg (1871-1946), who reported what he thought was a new type of primary ovarian malignancy in 1896; six years later these were shown to be of metastatic gastrointestinal tract origin.

Krukenberg tumors can occasionally provoke a reaction of the ovarian stroma which leads to hormone production, that results in vaginal bleeding, a change in menstrual habits, or hirsutism, or occasionally virilization as a main symptom.