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OBJECTIVE: To examine the prognostic performance of the revised 2018 International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) cervical cancer staging schema. METHODS: We used the National Cancer Database to identify women with cervical cancer diagnosed from 2004 to 2015. Using clinical and pathologic data, each patient's stage was classified using three staging schemas: American Joint Committee on Cancer 7th edition, FIGO 2009 and FIGO 2018. The FIGO 2018 revised staging classifies stage IB tumors into three substages based on tumor size (IB1–IB3) and classifies patients with positive lymph nodes (pathologically or clinically detected) as stage IIIC1 (positive pelvic nodes) or IIIC2 (positive para-aortic nodes). Five-year survival rates were estimated for each stage grouping. We sought to determine whether the 2018 FIGO staging system was able to offer improved 5-year survival rate differentiation compared with older staging schemas. RESULTS: A total of 62,212 women were identified. The classification of stage IB tumors into three substages improved discriminatory ability. Five-year survival in the FIGO 2018 schema was 91.6% (95% CI 90.4–92.6%) for stage IB1 tumors, 83.3% (95% CI 81.8–84.8%) for stage IB2 neoplasms, and 76.1% (95% CI 74.3–77.8%) for IB3 lesions. In contrast, for women with stage III tumors, higher FIGO staging was not consistently associated with worse 5-year survival rates: stage IIIA (40.7%, 95 CI 37.1–44.3%), stage IIIB (41.4%; 95% CI 39.9–42.9%), stage IIIC1 (positive pelvic nodes) was 60.8% (95% CI 58.7–62.8%) and stage IIIC2 37.5% (95% CI 33.3–41.7%). CONCLUSION: The FIGO 2018 staging schema provides improved discriminatory ability for women with stage IB tumors; however, classification of all women with positive lymph nodes into a single stage results in a very heterogeneous group of patients with highly variable survival rates.

A review of the research to date on the relation between the vaginal microbiome and gynaecological cancers.

No abstract

The unique molecular features of VVM render this disease a distinct subtype of melanoma. Gene-based molecular therapy and immunotherapies may be promising and should be evaluated in clinical trials. Cancer 2017;123:1333-1344. © 2016 American Cancer Society.

The diagnosis and treatment of uterine LMS is challenging. Novel biomarkers offer hope for future therapies.

Purpose Despite the potential benefits of minimally invasive hysterectomy for uterine cancer, population-level data describing the procedure’s safety in unselected patients are lacking. We examined the use of minimally invasive surgery and the association between the route of the procedure and long-term survival. Methods We used the SEER-Medicare database to identify women with stage I-III uterine cancer who underwent hysterectomy from 2006 to 2011. Patients who underwent abdominal hysterectomy were compared with those who had minimally invasive hysterectomy (laparoscopic and robot-assisted). Perioperative morbidity, use of adjuvant therapy, and long-term survival were examined after propensity score balancing. Results We identified 6,304 patients, including 4,139 (65.7%) who underwent abdominal hysterectomy and 2,165 (34.3%) who underwent minimally invasive hysterectomy; performance of minimally invasive hysterectomy increased from 9.3% in 2006 to 61.7% in 2011. Robot-assisted procedures accounted for 62.3% of the minimally invasive operations. Compared with women who underwent abdominal hysterectomy, minimally invasive hysterectomy was associated with a lower overall complication rate (22.7% v 39.7%; P < .001), and lower perioperative mortality (0.6% v 1.1%), but these women were more likely to receive adjuvant pelvic radiotherapy (34.3% v 31.3%) and brachytherapy (33.6% v 31.0%; P < .05). The complication rate was higher after robot-assisted hysterectomy compared with laparoscopic hysterectomy (23.7% v 19.5%; P = .03). There was no association between the use of minimally invasive hysterectomy and either overall (HR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.75 to 1.04) or cancer-specific (HR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.59 to 1.16) mortality. Conclusion Minimally invasive hysterectomy does not appear to compromise long-term survival for women with endometrial cancer.

OBJECTIVE To examine relative survival (a metric that incorporates changes in survival within a population) in women with ovarian cancer from 1975 to 2011. METHODS Women diagnosed with ovarian cancer from 1975 to 2011 and recorded in the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database were examined. Relative survival, estimated as the ratio of the observed survival of cancer patients (all-cause mortality) to the expected survival of a comparable group from the general population, was matched to the patients with the main factors that are considered to affect patient survival such as age, calendar time, and race. Hazard ratios were adjusted for age, race, year of diagnosis, time since diagnosis, and the interaction of age and years since diagnosis (except for stage II). RESULTS A total of 49,932 women were identified. For stage I ovarian cancer, the adjusted excess hazard ratio for death in 2006 was 0.51 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.41–0.63) compared with those diagnosed in 1975. The reduction in excess mortality remained significant when compared with 1980 and 1985. For women with stage III–IV tumors, the excess hazard of mortality was lower in 2006 compared with all other years of study ranging from 0.49 (95% CI 0.44–0.55) compared with 1975 to 0.93 (95% CI 0.87–0.99) relative to 2000. For women aged 50–59 years, 10-year relative survival was 0.85 (99% CI 0.61–0.95) for stage I disease and 0.18 (99% CI 0.10–0.27) for stage III–IV tumors. For women aged 60–69 years, the corresponding 10-year relative survival estimates were 0.89 (99% CI 0.58–0.98) and 0.15 (99% CI 0.09–0.21). CONCLUSION Relative survival has improved for all stages of ovarian cancer from 1975 to 2011.