Rates, Sites and Times of Recurrence and Clinical Outcome of Endometrial Cancer Patients with Histologically-positive Nodes: An Italian Two-center Retrospective Study

Abstract

Background/aim: To assess the patterns of recurrence of node-positive endometrial cancer patients.

Patients and methods: This investigation assessed 82 patients who received different postoperative treatments.

Results: Recurrence developed in 36 patients after a median time of 13.5 months, and involved the vagina, pelvic nodes, para-aortic nodes and distant sites in 5, 8, 16 and 17 patients, respectively. Five-year progression-free survival (PFS) and 5-year overall survival (OS) were 51.1% and 59.8%. PFS and OS were significantly better for endometrioid than for non-endometrioid tumors. There was a trend towards a better outcome for patients who underwent chemotherapy±radiotherapy compared to those who received radiotherapy alone. Among the former, there was a better 5-year PFS (65.8% versus 33.7%, p=0.038) in patients who received platinum/paclitaxel-based regimens compared to those who received platinum-based chemotherapy.

Conclusion: Disease recurred in 43.9% of patients, and platinum/paclitaxel-based chemotherapy plus radiotherapy appeared to be the best adjuvant treatment.

Keywords: Endometrial cancer; chemotherapy; lymphadenectomy; node metastases; patterns of failures; radiotherapy.