Comparison Between Conventional Surgery Plus Postoperative Adjuvant Radiotherapy and Concurrent Chemoradiation for FIGO Stage IIB Cervical Carcinoma

Abstract

To compare treatment outcome of conventional surgery followed by adjuvant postoperative radiotherapy (PORT) versus concurrent chemoradiation therapy (cCRT) for stage IIB cervical carcinoma. A retrospective analysis was conducted of 59 patients with stage IIB uterine cervical cancer treated with radical surgery plus PORT (N = 34) or cCRT-alone (N = 25) from April 1996 to June 2008. The median follow-up time was 27 months (range, 3-150 months) in the cCRT group and 44 months (range, 4-134 months) in the PORT group. The median age was 59 years (range, 37-85 years) in the cCRT group and 49 years (range, 32-74 years) in the PORT group. All 34 patients in the surgery group underwent hysterectomy with pelvic lymph node dissection and received PORT. Twenty-five patients (42%) were assigned to the cCRT group. The 3-year overall survival rates for surgery plus PORT and cCRT-alone were 80.0% and 75.1%, respectively. The difference between these 2 treatments was not statistically significant (log-rank P = 0.5871). The late complication rate of grade 3-4 was 12% in the cCRT group and 26% in the surgery group. This retrospective study suggests that survival results with cCRT and with conventional surgery plus PORT for patients with stage IIB cervical carcinoma are comparable.