Objective: To explore the effects of chemotherapy in recurrent endometrial carcinoma.
Methods: A retrospective study was carried out on the clinical data of 20 cases of recurrent endometrial carcinoma hospitalized from May. 1992 to Jun. 2002.
Results: The recurrence rate of these 20 cases was 11.0%. The recurrence occurred (17 +/- 10) months after the first therapy. Eleven of the 20 patients (55.0%) had accepted chemotherapy with (6 +/- 4) courses and were followed up for (17 +/- 16) months after the second therapy. Fifteen cases (75.0%) died of cancer, 4 cases survived with tumor, and only 1 case (5.0%) was tumor-free. Univariate model revealed that chemotherapy and number of chemotherapy course were related with the prognosis (P = 0.0146, P = 0.0353). Radiotherapy affected the prognosis too (P = 0.0414). But pathologic subtype, stage, tumor cell differentiation, age, recurrent time, surgery, chemotherapy scheme, drug infusion way , and endocrine therapy had no relation with the prognosis (P = 0.5517, 0.5763, 0.1879, 0.880, 0.453, 0.0672, 0.0795, 0.5956, and 0.2035). Multivariate model revealed that chemotherapy had influence on the prognosis (beta = -1.349, OR = 0.259, P = 0.026).
Conclusion: Combined treatment raises the survival of the recurrent endometrial carcinoma patients, in which chemotherapy plays a leading role and influences the prognosis remarkably.