[Radiochemotherapy of uterine cervix cancers. Recent data]

Low-stage uterine cervix carcinoma can be treated by either surgery, radiation therapy or combined treatments with high cure rates ranging from 90 to 95% for stage IB1 tumors. However, the standard treatment, combining external beam plus intracavitary radiation, fails to control the progression of the disease in 35 to 90% of patients with locally advanced cervical cancer. No substantial improvements have been made in the treatment of these tumors in the past two decades. The addition of concurrent 5-FU in a phase III study failed to improve the results in the overall patient population, but the five-year DFS was significantly better in a subset of patients (tumor > 5 cm and IB/IIA or medial parametrial IIB disease). Concurrent chemoradiation and adjuvant chemotherapy with epirubicin showed, in a phase III study, a significantly longer DFS in patients treated with chemotherapy despite the same long-term local tumor control. After many phase II studies, five phase III studies have recently demonstrated a 40 to 60% reduction in the relative risk of recurrence with cisplatin-containing chemoradiation. Across these studies, the risk of death was reduced by 30 to 50%. The benefit was less clear in patients with stages III-IV tumors than in patients with lower stages associated with poor prognostic factors. Haematologic and gastrointestinal toxicity of chemoradiation was greater than that of radiotherapy alone. However, late side effects were similar in the different treatment groups. These results must be confirmed with a longer follow-up. The importance of concurrent chemotherapy during the brachytherapy procedure should be analyzed. It has yet to be determined which chemotherapy regimen achieves the most favorable therapeutic ratio.