Evaluation of Postoperative Radiotherapy and Concurrent Chemotherapy Effectiveness in Cervical Cancer

Overview

The present study is a randomized, control, phase II/III study of early stage (FIGO Ia2-IIb) cervical cancer after radical hysterectomy in Northwest China treated with radiotherapy or concurrent chemoradiotherapy based on the surgical-pathological risk factors. All the patients received whole pelvis radiation and were divided into three groups according to adjuvant chemotherapy: concurrent chemotherapy with cisplatin weekly (40mg/m2) , concurrent chemotherapy with docetaxel plus cisplatin tri-weekly (75mg/m2), or concurrent and adjuvant chemotherapy with docetaxel plus cisplatin tri-weekly (75mg/m2). The effectiveness, and side effects will be evaluated according to Standard WHO response criteria, and NCI common toxicity criteria for adverse events(NCI-CTC-AE) V3.0.

To the cervical cancer patient who accepted radical hysterectomy, whether the adjuvant therapy should be received or the method of adjuvant therapy are determined by the postoperative pathology. In the traditional opinion, the postoperative risk factors were divided into two groups: intermediate risk factors, including large tumor size, deep stromal invasion and lymphovascular space invasion, and high risk factors, including non-squamous cell carcinoma, marginal positive, parametric invasion and pelvic lymph node(LN) metastasis. Patients with intermediate risk factors should accepted adjuvant radiotherapy only and who with high risk factors should received adjuvant concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Cisplatin weekly(40mg/m2) was the standard regimen of concurrent chemotherapy. However, we retrospectively analyzed 801 cervical cancer patients with postoperative radiotherapy and found that distant metastasis was the main cause of current treatment failure(84.5%), which suggested the current regimen of chemotherapy was insufficient and might be strengthened in future.