[Treatment of advanced cervical cancer]

Patients with advanced-stage cervical cancer are treated with radiation. Although 5-year survival rates of about 40 percent are reported, there is clearly room for improvement. The potential usefulness of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) before planned surgery is under investigation. The clinical response to NAC seems to be related to survival. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy before planned radiation therapy has not been demonstrated to provide a benefit. In the area of concomitant chemotherapy and radiation, a number of clinical trials have been completed or are under way, but at this time there is no proven benefit to combining chemotherapy with radiation. It is very interesting that concomitant weekly cisplatin and prophylactic paraaortic radiation was reported to improve survival.