Patients with endometrioid uterine cancers with no myometrial invasion and tumor grade I/II might have minimal risk of LNM, whereas others might require complete pelvic and para-aortic lymphadenectomy for surgical staging.

The aim of this study was to compare the outcome of chemotherapy or radiation as adjuvant therapy for patients with FIGO stage IB-IIA cervical cancer and surgically confirmed intermediate risk factors. Data were collected from patients with uterine cervical cancer FIGO stage IB-IIA who had adjuvant chemotherapy following radical hysterectomy with pelvic lymph node dissection (RHLND, cases) or adjuvant radiotherapy following RHLND (controls). The study groups consisted of 38 cases and 42 controls. Adjuvant treatment was given to the patients with a combination of intermediate risk factors including deep stromal invasion (>50%), lymphvascular space invasion, large tumor size (3-6 cm), or close vaginal resection margin (<1 cm). Comparison of the cases with the controls revealed no significant differences in variables studied including median age (P = 0.18), stage distribution (P = 0.30), histologic subtype (P = 0.93), pathologic tumor size (P = 0.46), depth of the stromal invasion (P = 0.29), lymphvascular space invasion (P = 0.50), and close vaginal resection margin (P = 0.62). The difference in disease-free survival rates was not significant (P = 0.68). However, the overall survival analysis was incomplete due to the limited number of events available at the end of the study period. The findings of this study suggest that adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with FIGO stage IB-IIA uterine cervical cancer and surgically confirmed intermediate risk factors may be effective.

Clinical practice guidelines for gynecologic cancers have been developed by academic society from several countries. Each guideline reflected their own insurance system and unique medical environment, based on the published evidence. The Korean Society of Gynecologic Oncology (KSGO) published the first edition of practice guidelines for gynecologic cancer treatment in late 2006; the second edition was released in July 2010 as an evidence-based recommendation. The Guidelines Revision Committee was established in 2015 and decided to develop the third edition of the guidelines in an advanced format based on evidence-based medicine, embracing up-to-date clinical trials and qualified Korean data. These guidelines cover strategies for diagnosis and treatment of primary and recurrent cervical cancer. The committee members and many gynecologic oncologists derived key questions through discussions, and a number of relevant scientific literature were reviewed in advance. Recommendations for each specific question were developed by the consensus conference, and they are summarized here, along with the details. The objective of these practice guidelines is to establish standard policies on issues in clinical practice related to the management in cervical cancer based on the results in published papers to date and the consensus of experts as a KSGO Consensus Statement.

Cervical cancer is the third most common malignant disease of women worldwide. Despite advances in screening and treatment strategies, a significant number of patients have advanced and recurrent disease. These patients are not amenable to curative treatments, such as surgery and radiation, and have poor prognosis. Therefore, palliative treatment remains the standard of care for these patients. Several phase II/III trials have demonstrated that cisplatin is the most active single agent, and the combination of cisplatin and paclitaxel is considered a standard regimen for clinical practice and trials in these patients with improved response rates and progression-free intervals. Although other cisplatin doublet chemotherapy regimens were not superior to cisplatin plus paclitaxel, substituting topotecan or gemcitabine for paclitaxel might be helpful for some patients considering different toxicity profiles. Because the response to palliative chemotherapy is poor, several targeted agents including bevacizumab, erlotinib, pazopanib, lapatinib, sunitinib and cetuximab, each of which inhibits cell proliferation and angiogenesis, were evaluated in these patients. Of them, bevacizumab, targeting vascular endothelial growth factor, showed favorable results. Recent phase III trial showed that bevacizumab combined with chemotherapy was shown to significantly improve the response rate, progression-free interval, and overall survival compared to chemotherapy alone. These results suggest that targeted agents could significantly improve survival and affect practice guidelines in these patients showing poor prognosis. Thus, future trials using newly developed targeted agents are warranted to improve treatment strategies in these patients.

Our data demonstrate that epigenetic inactivation of hSRBC due to aberrant promoter hypermethylation is a common event and might be implicated in human ovarian tumorigenesis.