Investigator
Hospital Italiano De Buenos Aires
Infection versus cancer: management of actinomyces mimicking cervical cancer or ovarian cancer
Primary vaginal sarcoma treated with upfront fertility-sparing surgery
Simple trachelectomy with laparoscopic pelvic lymphadenectomy in a pregnant woman with a FIGO stage IA2 cervical cancer
Oncological and obstetrical outcomes after neo-adjuvant chemotherapy followed by fertility-sparing surgery in patients with cervical cancer ≥2 cm
There is significant debate between up-front radical trachelectomy versus neo-adjuvant chemotherapy before fertility-sparing surgery in patients with tumors ≥2 cm. The aim of this study was to report on the oncological and obstetrical outcome of neo-adjuvant chemotherapy followed by fertility-sparing surgery, in patients diagnosed with cervical cancer ≥2 cm. This was a retrospective review of patients diagnosed with cervical cancer measuring ≥2 cm to ≤6 cm, who were scheduled to undergo neo-adjuvant chemotherapy before fertility-sparing surgery, at six institutions from four Latin American countries between February 2009 and February 2019. Data collected included: age, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) 2009 stage, histology, tumor size, pre-treatment imaging work-up, chemotherapy agents and number of cycles, toxicity, clinical and imaging response rate, type of fertility-sparing surgery, pathology results, timing of lymphadenectomy, follow-up time, and obstetrical and oncological outcomes. A total of 25 patients were included, with a median age of 27 years (range 20-37): 17 patients had stage IB1, 7 had stage IB2 cervical cancer, and 1 patient had stage IIA1 (FIGO 2009); 23 patients had squamous cell carcinoma and 2 patients had adenocarcinoma. The median number of chemotherapy cycles was 3 (range 3-6) and no toxicity grade 3-4 was reported. Lymphadenectomy was performed before chemotherapy in 6 (24%) patients. After neo-adjuvant chemotherapy 20 patients were scheduled for radical trachelectomy (11 abdominal and 9 laparoscopic) and 5 patients for conization. After surgery, no residual disease was found in 11 patients (44%). Fertility was preserved in 23 patients (92%) and 10 patients became pregnant (43.5%). After a median follow-up time of 47 months (13-133), 3 patients had recurrent disease (3/23=13%), 2 were alive without disease, and 1 patient had disease at last contact. Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy followed by fertility-sparing surgery is feasible in well selected patients with cervical tumors ≥2 cm. Future studies should focus on the timing of lymphadenectomy and type of cervical surgery.
Uterine transposition after radical trachelectomy
Oncological outcomes of laparoscopic radical hysterectomy versus radical abdominal hysterectomy in patients with early-stage cervical cancer: a multicenter analysis
Recent evidence has shown adverse oncological outcomes when minimally invasive surgery is used in early-stage cervical cancer. The objective of this study was to compare disease-free survival in patients that had undergone radical hysterectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy, either by laparoscopy or laparotomy. We performed a multicenter, retrospective cohort study of patients with cervical cancer stage IA1 with lymph-vascular invasion, IA2, and IB1 (FIGO 2009 classification), between January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2017, at seven cancer centers from six countries. We included squamous, adenocarcinoma, and adenosquamous histologies. We used an inverse probability of treatment weighting based on propensity score to construct a weighted cohort of women, including predictor variables selected a priori with the possibility of confounding the relationship between the surgical approach and survival. We estimated the HR for all-cause mortality after radical hysterectomy with weighted Cox proportional hazard models. A total of 1379 patients were included in the final analysis, with 681 (49.4%) operated by laparoscopy and 698 (50.6%) by laparotomy. There were no differences regarding the surgical approach in the rates of positive vaginal margins, deep stromal invasion, and lymphovascular space invasion. Median follow-up was 52.1 months (range, 0.8-201.2) in the laparoscopic group and 52.6 months (range, 0.4-166.6) in the laparotomy group. Women who underwent laparoscopic radical hysterectomy had a lower rate of disease-free survival compared with the laparotomy group (4-year rate, 88.7% vs 93.0%; HR for recurrence or death from cervical cancer 1.64; 95% CI 1.09-2.46; P=0.02). In sensitivity analyzes, after adjustment for adjuvant treatment, radical hysterectomy by laparoscopy compared with laparotomy was associated with increased hazards of recurrence or death from cervical cancer (HR 1.7; 95% CI 1.13 to 2.57; P=0.01) and death for any cause (HR 2.14; 95% CI 1.05-4.37; P=0.03). In this retrospective multicenter study, laparoscopy was associated with worse disease-free survival, compared to laparotomy.
