Analysis of residual disease following preoperative radiotherapy versus initial surgery in endometrial carcinoma

A clinicopathologic study of residual disease following pre-operative radiotherapy (RT) in 67 patients and initial surgery in 40 patients with early invasive endometrial carcinoma is presented. In 10%, extrauterine spread was found at operation. In 10% of patients, the histologic type, and in 19% the grade of tumor, differed between the curettage and hysterectomy specimens. Pre-op RT altered the depth of myometrial invasion and frequency of vascular invasion, but there was no evidence that irradiation itself affected the histologic type or grade of tumor. The patients with residual tumor after pre-op RT had significantly more cancer-related deaths than those without residual disease. The high risk factors were deep myometrial invasion and residual disease outside the uterus. Vascular invasion did not affect the prognosis in this series. The importance of surgical-pathologic staging by initial surgery is discussed.