Surgical treatment of clinically early-stage endometrial carcinoma without systematic lymphadenectomy

Tratamento cirúrgico do câncer de endométrio em estágio clínico precoce sem linfadenectomia radical.

Objective:  the main aim of this study was to describe the authors’ experience with the surgical treatment of endometrial cancer without systematic lymphadenectomy.

Methods:  a retrospective cohort study was carried out on a subset of patients suffering of clinically early-stage endometrial carcinoma who underwent hysterectomy and salpingo-oophorectomy without systematic (radical) lymph nodes dissection at our centers from June, 2002, to November, 2011. Descriptive statistics were explored as medians (interquartile range) or frequencies (percentages), as appropriated, and the Kaplan–Meier method was applied for survival estimation.

Results:  eighty-three patients who underwent surgical treatment with no lymph node dissection (n = 20; 24.1%) or with only a sampling procedure (n=63; 75.98%) were selected for analysis. Among these patients, 27 (32.53%) underwent surgery alone and 56 (67.46%) received some adjuvant treatment. Postoperative complications occurred in five patients (6.02%). Over a median follow-up of 27.4 months (Q₂₅ = 13.7 – Q₇₅ = 46.5), 15 (18.07%) patients suffered from relapses and 11 deaths occurred as result of disease recurrence. Cumulative 1, 2 and 3-year disease- free survivals were 97.32, 91.18 and 78.02%, respectively.

Conclusion:  on a case-by-case basis, the surgical treatment of clinically early-stage endometrial carcinoma without systematic lymphadenectomy did not seem to decrease survival outcomes and presented low rates of surgical morbidity in our experience, but was also related to a high rate use of adjuvant therapy.

endometrial neoplasms; survival analysis; lymph node dissection