Purpose: To compare Italian use with current international guidelines and to evaluate oncological outcomes and toxicity patterns of adjuvant radiation therapy (RT) for endometrial cancer (EC) in Italian women.
Materials and methods: To conduct a retrospective multicentre Italian study a large database was set up. Inclusion criteria were: accrual between 2010 and 2020, treatment with surgery, post-operative external beam RT (EBRT) and/or interventional radiotherapy (IRT) associated or not with adjuvant chemotherapy. Oncological outcomes, acute and late toxicities were analysed according to RT schedule and risk group.
Results: A total of 1848 patients, from 16 Italian RT centres were enrolled (median age 65 years, range 27-88). All patients received post-operative RT associated with chemotherapy in 31%. Patients were stratified on the basis of standard risk factors (Bosse et al. in Eur J Cancer 51:1742-50, 2015). After merging intermediate and high-intermediate risk classes into one intermediate group and including advanced and oligometastatic disease in the high-risk group, the low-risk group encompassed 124 patients, the intermediate-risk 1140, and the high risk 576. No low-risk patient developed local relapse (LR). Multivariate analysis showed that intermediate risk patients had a 2.5-fold increased risk of LR if treated with IRT alone vs EBRT-IRT boost. RT schedule did not impact significantly on LR in high risk patients. All acute toxicity parameters were highest in patients who received EBRT with simultaneous integrated boost (EBRT-SIB) and lowest in patients who received only IRT (p < 0.0001). Late toxicity was highest patients who received EBRT-SIB and lowest in those who were given EBRT with sequential boost (p < 0.0001).
Conclusions: This retrospective study showed that Italian administration of adjuvant RT for EC is in accordance with current international guidelines. IRT alone for low-risk patients and EBRT associated with vaginal IRT remain standard adjuvant approaches for EC.
Keywords: Adjuvant treatments; Endometrial cancer; Interventional radiotherapy; Brachytherapy; Radiation therapy; Radiotherapy.
© 2024. The Author(s).