Cancer
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Comparative Study
Irradiation alone or in combination with surgery in stage IB and IIA carcinoma of the uterine cervix: A nonrandomized comparison.
This is a report of a nonrandomized comparison of treatment results of 244 patients with stage IB carcinoma of the uterine cervix treated by radiation alone and 92 treated with preoperative radiation and surgery and 77 patients with stage IIA treated by radiation alone and 24 treated with a combination of radiation and surgery. The techniques of irradiation and types of operation are described in detail. The five-year tumor free actuarial survival for the patients with stage IB treated either with irradiation alone or combined with surgery was approximately 85% and the ten-year survival, 78%. ⋯ In stage IIA there were three failures in eight patients with residual tumor in the specimen in contrast to only two of 16 with negative specimens (12.5%). Major complications were comparable in both groups (radiation alone approximately 8.7% and irradiation combined with surgery approximately 14%), the difference is not statistically significant. The most frequent minor complication in patients treated with radiation alone was vaginal fibrosis (30 patients--9%) or vaginal vault necrosis (10 patients--3%).