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Table of Contents
Definition / general | Clinical features | Case reports | Clinical images | Gross description | Microscopic (histologic) description | Microscopic (histologic) images | Cytology description | Differential diagnosisCite this page: Perunovic B., Rosa M. Endocervical polyp. PathologyOutlines.com website. http://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/cervixendocervpolyp.html. Accessed March 25th, 2019.
Definition / general
- 2 - 5% of adult women
- Usually multigravida age 30 - 59 years
- Produces bleeding or mucoid discharge
- Probably secondary to chronic inflammation and not neoplastic
Clinical features
- Endocervical polyps originate in the endocervical canal in 2 - 5% of women
- May be benign or contain another lesions such as dysplasia or carcinoma
- Benign polyps may be diagnosed as AGUS on cytologic smear (Acta Cytol 2000;44:41, Acta Cytol 1999;43:351)
Case reports
- 5 year old girl with multilocular cystic polyp (Pediatr Pathol 1993;13:415)
- 33 year old woman with heterologous cartilage and adipose tissue (Pathol Int 2001;51:305)
Clinical images
Images hosted on other servers:
Polyp
Gross description
- Usually single, up to 1 cm
- Rarely mimics malignant tumor protruding into endocervical canal
Microscopic (histologic) description
- Dilated endocervical (mucus) glands in inflamed, myxoid stroma
- Papillary endocervicitis if branching papillary structure
- Surface epithelium may show squamous metaplasia
- Thick walled blood vessels at base of polyp
- No mitotic figures
Microscopic (histologic) images
Images hosted on PathOut server:
Contributed by Andrey Bychkov, M.D., Ph.D.
Endocervical polyp with Nabothian cysts
Images hosted on other servers:
Whole mount
Various images
Cytology description
- Tridimensional groups of endocervical cells, may show squamous metaplasia, hyperchromasia, mitosis and cellular crowding limited to a few groups of cells only
- Endocervical polyps are prone to ulceration that causes degenerative, reparative and metaplastic changes that can be seen on cytology; these changes may mimic dysplasia or glandular neoplasia
- Benign polyps have no feathering, no nuclear palisading, no chromatin clearing
- Rarely contains metastatic disease (Acta Cytol 1996;40:765)
Differential diagnosis
