Objective: To evaluate clinical outcome, prognostic factors and chronic morbidity with radiotherapy for vaginal cancer treatment.
Materials and methods: 68 patients with vaginal cancer treated by radical or adjuvant radiotherapy (RT) were selected. Five with rare subtypes of histopathology and 8 with adenocarcinoma were excluded from this study. 76.4% of the remainder had early-stage diseases (stage I: 14, II: 28, III: 9, and IV: 4). The patients in the years from which they were treated were almost evenly distributed (1st 5 years: 13, 2nd: 14, 3rd: 16, and 4th: 12). There were four treatment groups: external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) alone (n=18), brachytherapy (BT) alone (n=4), EBRT and BT (n=30), and surgery plus RT (n=3).
Results: Median follow-up was 50.3 months ranging from 3 to 213 months. 5-year overall survival (OS) was 55.6%, disease-specific survival (DSS) was 77.3%, disease-free survival was 74.2%, and local control was 87.7%. Independent prognostic factors for DSS and OS were tumor stage, site and size (p<0.05). Late radiation toxicity was minimal in the bladder (4.6%) and bowel (4.6%). Vaginal morbidity was observed in 35 patients (63.6%). It was lowest in the BT alone (0%), and highest in the EBRT and BT group (82.1%), especially for those received more than 70 Gy (p=0.05, Odds ratio=4.64, 95% confidence interval: 1.01-21.65).
Conclusion: This retrospective review suggested that tumor stage, site, and size were important prognostic factors in patients with vaginal cancer. Higher radiation dose was associated with more frequent vaginal toxicity.