Carcinoma cervix: A single institute experience from Kashmir, Northern India

Background: Carcinoma cervix is the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide, with an estimated 604,000 new cases and 342,000 deaths worldwide in 2020. Carcinoma cervix is an uncommon malignancy in Kashmir. In this retrospective study, we have tried to find clinicopathological characteristics of carcinoma cervix along with the survival rates at our tertiary care hospital.

Materials and methods: Case records of cervical cancer patients registered from January 1, 2015, to January 1, 2019, were retrieved. A total of 138 patients was registered. 22 had undergone surgery, and out of these 17 had received postoperative radiotherapy. 109 patients were treated with definitive chemoradiation and 13 with palliative radiotherapy. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize patient and treatment-related variables, and Kaplan-Meier analysis was performed for survival analysis.

Results: A total of 138 cases that were registered from 2015 to 2019 were included in this study. The median age at the presentation was 56 years. Most of the patients had a performance status of 1 (98 patients (71.01)). Most of the patients 110 (79.71%) were married before 20 years of age, only 1 patient was unmarried, and 85 (61.59) patients were multiparous in our study group. Only 14 (10.14%) patients in our study group had a history of oral contraceptive use and most of them were non-smokers [124 (89.80%)]. Multiple marriages were present in 8 (5.79%) patients only. The most common presenting symptom was bleeding per vagina (78.26%), and the maximum number of patients fall in the post-menopausal group (67.39%). 116 patients had squamous cell carcinoma histology while 10 patients had adenocarcinoma histology. Most of the patients had stage II and stage III disease (85 patients). At last, follow up out of 138 patients 75 (54.35) were alive. 3 year disease-free survival was 54.34% and 3-year overall survival was 72.46%.

Conclusion: Carcinoma cervix is an uncommon malignancy in Kashmir because of different socio-cultural and religious practices but the response to treatment, toxicity profile, and survival are similar to the rest of the world.