[Radical surgical treatment of vulvar epidermoid cancer]

During an eighteen-year period, forty-nine patients with invasive epidermoid carcinoma of the vulva were treated by a radical vulvectomy at the Hôtel-Dieu de France hospital in Beirut. The age, the clinical presentation, and the lymph nodes involvement were close to what was published in the literature. The overall five-year survival rate was 72%. Those with stage I disease lesions had an excellent survival rate. A review of the literature would indicate that a conservative approach in the treatment of early invasive lesions can give satisfactory results, and that adjuvant radiotherapy is more beneficial than pelvic lymph nodes dissection when there is a high risk of pelvic involvement.