[Five years' experience on intracavitary afterloading technique for carcinoma of the uterine cervix]

A series of 152 patients with carcinoma of uterine cervix treated from 1983-1984 by 3-channel (Cs-137) Buchler afterloading is presented. There were 1 Stage I, 89 Stage II (58.55%), 60 Stage III (39.47%) and 2 Stage IV lesions. The dose rate at point A was 10-25 cGy/min. The isoeffect correction factor of the afterloading and conventional methods at point A was 0.625. The over-all 5-year survival rate of the whole series was 70.39%, with 77.53% for Stage II and 61.67% for Stage III lesions. The frequency of late rectal and bladder reactions were 9.21% and 7.89%, respectively. It should be pointed out that the dose rate at the point 2cm from the external os was 1.7-8 times as high as that at point A, which caused more severe reactions in the surrounding tissues. A suggestion of reducing the number of fractions of intracavitary afterloading irradiation, the dose at point A delivered from vaginal irradiation and adopting partial whole pelvic external irradiation is put forward by the authors.