The Incidence of Uterine Leiomyoma and Leiomyosarcoma at Tripoli Medical Center, Libya

الملخص

Uterine fibroids are common benign smooth muscle tumor arise from muscular part of the uterus and considered one
of the major causes of abnormal uterine bleeding in women of reproductive age group and the main reason still not
known exactly. On the other hand, the leiomyosarcoma which is rapidly growing are malignant tumor arise in postmenopausal women and often detected as an incidental finding in hysterectomy specimens.
In this study, the incidence of uterine smooth muscle tumors (leiomyosarcoma and leiomyoma) in the Libyan woman
and their distribution among the different age groups (from 11 to 80 years old), their type, location and the way of
therapy was investigated. The study was conducted at Diagnostic Histopathology Laboratory at the Tripoli Medical
Center Hospital (TMC) involving 1952 cases covering the period of twelve years from January 2002 to December
2013.
The obtained results indicated that the leiomyoma cases were much higher than leiomyosarcoma cases which
represent 99.28% compared to 0.71%. Moreover, the prevalence of leiomyoma cases reached the top value on the
year 2008 with 24.6%. Additionally, sharp increase in the incidence of leiomyoma cases was observed in the age
group between 30 to 50 years with more than 40%. Similarly, the highest number of leiomyosarcomas cases was
detected in the median ages of women (from 30 to 50’s) compared to the other age groups. The obtained differences
in the incidence trend of the analyzed cases and their different age and year distribution are highly expected to
reveal possible differences in their risk factors. Accordingly, additional investigations for the reasons behind such
differences are required and recommended. This large variation in the incidence of occurrence of both types of
uterine tumors and their sharp increase at a particular age group is not fully clear, however further investigation will
be carried out based on this survey.