[Treatment of cervical cancer in the aged]

The incidence of elderly patients in cervical cancer cases at The Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Okayama Medical School has been increases to 7.8% during the recent 5 years (1975-1979), comparing to that of the past period 1.9% (1934-1962). According to the statistics of The Ministry of Health and Welfare, the mortality of cervical cancer has been decreased in all the ages except the elderly patients, in which the mortality showed no marked fluctuation or somewhat elevation. According to the report of The Ministry of Health and Welfare, among the 2,014,843 cases of mass screening examination of cervical cancer, the incidence of elderly patient over 70 year old was 0.3% only, and the suspiciously malignant rate was 4.58% in this group. This means that in the elderly group, the incidence of mass screening examination was very low, and the morbidity was relatively high. Reviewing the elderly patients of the recent period, we found that about half of the patients were belong to the Stage III or IV, and even in the early cancer cases, the general diseases were complicated so much, that the main therapy was radiation rather than operation. Reviewing the prognosis and the irradiation dose in the radiation group, we found that the prognosis of the cases who received 4,000 rads external irradiation were better than that of the cases who received 5,000 approximately 6,000 rads. However, sometimes the complication of irradiation were too severe to continue, resulting in an incomplete treatment and bad prognosis. Considering about this, we select the cases to operate according to the physical state but not the age as indicated up to date, and the result was that, even in the aged group, the prognosis of the operable cases were comparable to that of the young aged. As a conclusion, the following can be said: 1) As the mean age has been prolonging, the incidence of the elderly cancer cases will increase progressively, and this will influence the treatment result of cervical cancer. 2) In the aged patients, the prognosis were influenced by the stage rather than the age, therefore, consideration of the treatment according to the stage is important.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)