Objectives: To evaluate sites of failure and long-term survival outcomes of locally advanced stage cervical cancer patients who had standard concurrent chemo-radiation (CCRT) versus those along with adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT) after CCRT.
Methods: Patients aged 18-70 years who had FIGO stage IIB-IVA without para-aortic lymph node enlargement (excluding by International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) 2018 stage IIIC2r), The Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) scores 0-2, and non-aggressive histopathology were randomized to have CCRT with weekly cisplatin followed by observation (arm A) or ACT with paclitaxel plus carboplatin every 4 weeks for 3 cycles (arm B).
Results: From 2015-2017, 259 patients were evaluated. The majority of patients were in stage II and had squamous cell carcinoma with a median tumor size of 5 cm. After the median follow-up of 40.87 months, 17.1% of the patients in arm A and 12.3% of the patients in arm B experienced recurrences (p=0.280). Adding all events of failure (persistence/progression/recurrence), treatment failures tended to be lower in arm A than in arm B: 13.2 versus 21.5 % for loco-regional failure (p = 0.076) and 3.9 versus 6.9% for loco-regional failure and systemic failure (p = 0.278). On the other hand, systemic failure tended to be higher in arm A than in arm B: 13.2% versus 6.9% (p =0.094). The 5-year progression-free survival and 5-year overall survival of patients in both arms were not significantly different.
Conclusions: ACT with paclitaxel plus carboplatin after CCRT did not improve response or survival of patients compared to CCRT alone. Although systemic failure tended to be lower in patients who had ACT after CCRT than those who had only CCRT, loco-regional failure with or without systemic failure tended to be higher. However, all of these differences were not statistically significant.
Keywords: Adjuvant chemotherapy; Concurrent chemoradiation therapy; locally advanced cervical cancer.