Adjuvant or Consolidation Chemotherapy for Locally Advanced Cervical Cancer

Abstract

Cervical cancer is a major health problem of women all over the world. Most of cervical cancer cases and deaths occurred in developing countries, such as Thailand, China, and India, etc. Poorer cervical cancer survival in developing countries is mainly because of suboptimal cancer screening leading to high proportion of advanced or locally advanced stage cervical cancer (LACC) at diagnosis. Although concurrent chemoradiation therapy is a standard treatment for LACC, high rates of local and distant failures are still encountered. New treatment modalities e.g. new chemotherapeutic regimens, combining chemotherapy with novel target agents or modification of chemotherapy dose or schedule are important. Our review focused on the role of adjuvant or consolidation chemotherapy after the standard concurrent chemoradiation therapy in LACC. From the studies or trials reviewed, additional chemotherapy appeared to yield higher response rate than simply CCRT. However, survival benefit from adjuvant or consolidation chemotherapy was still inconsistent. We explored each study in detail and discuss their findings to point out some important data which will be helpful in clinical management of these LACC patients.

Key words: locally advanced cervical cancer, adjuvant chemotherapy, consolidation chemotherapy