Adjuvant chemotherapy in endometrial carcinoma: overview of randomised trials

Endometrial cancer generally has a good prognosis because most cases are diagnosed in stage I. It is possible to identify subgroups of patients with early stage endometrial cancer with a poor prognosis. Despite a traditional generous use of adjuvant radiotherapy those patients have less than an 80% 5-year overall survival. In this group there is a need for an effective systemic adjuvant therapy. Two randomised studies have shown better response rates but no significant difference in overall survival for doxorubicin-cisplatin vs doxorubicin in advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer. Mainly on the basis of the superior response rates, doxorubicin-cisplatin was for many years regarded as the standard chemotherapy in endometrial cancer. GOG-177 was the first phase III study on chemotherapy in advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer that showed a survival advantage. Paclitaxel-doxorubicin-cisplatin was better than doxorubicin-cisplatin, but the toxicity of the three-drug regimen has precluded general acceptance. Paclitaxel-carboplatin has rendered high response rates in endometrial cancer and is widely used, despite the lack of evidence based on randomised studies. GOG-122 was a pivotal randomised study that compared doxorubicin-cisplatin with whole abdominal radiotherapy in advanced optimally operated endometrial cancer and showed that chemotherapy with doxorubicin-cisplatin resulted in superior survival. Two recent studies have compared adjuvant chemotherapy (cyclophosphamide-doxorubicin-cisplatin) with adjuvant radiotherapy in early stage endometrial cancer. Both studies failed to show a difference between the treatments, but neither was powered to show non-inferiority. Another study (NSGO-EC-9501/EORTC-55991) compared adjuvant radiotherapy plus chemotherapy with adjuvant radiotherapy and showed better survival with the combination. The implications of these studies are discussed.