For the patient with curable endometrial cancer, surgery remains an essential ingredient for success. Because treatment has been fairly stable for years, it has tended to be stereotyped. Though the programs are generally successful, there is still not adequate recognition of various surgically based categories of risk in applying treatments. Preliminary observations from a current surgical staging study of the Gynecologic Oncology Group suggests that such operative procedures carried out as part of primary definitive therapy can play a meaningful role determining risk that would influence the planned treatment.Cancer 48568-574. 1981.