Adjuvant treatment for endometrial cancer

This article reviews and interprets studies on adjuvant treatment of endometrial cancer published during the last 18 months.

For patients with intermediate and high intermediate risk endometrial cancer, vaginal brachytherapy remains the adjuvant therapy of choice. New molecular markers might help to define patients in this group for whom observation only is sufficient and women who might have benefitted from external beam radiotherapy. Preliminary results from large randomized controlled trials have shown that in early stage, high-risk endometrial cancer the addition of chemotherapy to external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) did not improve survival. The combination of vaginal brachytherapy with three courses of chemotherapy resulted in similar progression-free and overall survival (3 years) as EBRT. In stage III high-risk endometrial cancer, the addition of chemotherapy to EBRT improved failure-free survival but not overall survival (immature data). Chemotherapy alone had the same efficacy concerning progression-free and overall survival (immature data).

Three large randomized clinical trials on the role of adjuvant radio and/or chemotherapy have so far provided only immature results. Discussions about changes of clinical practice should be postponed until mature data from all three trials are available. The impact of new molecular markers for risk stratification will be assessed in ongoing RCTs.