Multimodality adjuvant therapy and survival outcomes in stage I-IV uterine carcinosarcoma

Uterine carcinosarcoma is a rare, aggressive form of uterine cancer with a high recurrence rate and poor survival at all stages. We sought to evaluate the outcomes of patients treated with chemotherapy versus a combination of chemotherapy and radiation (chemoradiation) to determine survival.

A multicenter retrospective analysis of patients with stage I-IV carcinosarcoma was conducted from January 2000 to December 2017. Inclusion criteria were primary surgical management, defined as hysterectomy ± salpingo-oophorectomy, comprehensive surgical staging and/or tumor debulking, followed by adjuvant chemotherapy or chemoradiation. Differences in the frequencies of stage, cytoreduction status, treatment delays and sites of disease recurrence were identified using Pearson's χ² test. Progression-free and overall survival rates were calculated using Kaplan-Meier estimates.

Final analysis included 148 patients; 40.5% (n=60) chemotherapy and 59.5% (n=88) chemoradiation. The mean age was 67 years (range 39-89). Stage distribution included 24.3% stage I, 12.2% stage II, 37.2% stage III, and 26.3% stage IV. There was no difference in the frequency of stage (p=0.81), cytoreduction status (p=0.61), treatment delays (p=0.57), or location of recurrence (p=0.97) between cohorts. The most frequent location of recurrence was the abdomen (50.0%). The median progression-free survival favored chemoradiation over chemotherapy (15 vs 11 months, respectively), as did the median overall survival (26 vs 20 months, respectively). Chemoradiation was associated with a statistically significant improvement in 2 year progression-free survival (22.5% vs 13.6%; p=0.006) and 2 year overall survival (50.0% vs 35.6%; p=0.018) compared with chemotherapy alone. On subanalysis of patients receiving chemoradiation, 'sandwich sequencing' (chemotherapy-radiation-chemotherapy) was associated with superior overall survival compared with alternate therapy sequences (chemotherapy-radiation and radiation-chemotherapy) (34 months vs 14 months and 14 months, respectively) (p=0.038).

Chemoradiation was associated with improvement in both progression-free and overall survival for all stages of carcinosarcoma compared with chemotherapy alone.