Prolonged conservative treatment in patients with recurrent endometrial cancer after primary fertility-sparing therapy: 15-year experience

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and prognosis of repeated treatment on patients with recurrent endometrial cancer (EC) after complete remission for primary fertility-preserving therapy.

Materials and methods: We performed a retrospective study of patients with presumed stage IA endometrial cancer who had recurrence after achieving complete remission by fertility-preserving management at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, from January 2003 to April 2018. For each patient, medical records and pathology reports were reviewed. The demographic features, treatment efficacy, tumor prognosis, and reproductive outcome were analyzed.

Results: Of the 41 recurrent patients with a median disease-free interval period of 16 months (range, 5-55 months), 23 were diagnosed at recurrence as EC, and 18 were diagnosed as atypical hyperplasia (AH) or endometrial intraepithelial neoplasia (EIN). 26 patients received repeated fertility-preserving treatment, and 23 patients were evaluable for efficacy. The complete response (CR) rate of repeated treatment (19/23, 82.6%) was lower than that of primary fertility-preserving treatment (161/170, 94.7%) with borderline significance (P = 0.053). The CR rate of AH/EIN patients was higher than that of EC patients with no statistical difference (92.9% vs 66.7%, P = 0.260). Among 19 patients achieved CR, 3 got pregnant and delivered successfully, while 3 had a second relapse. Four cases failed to response to the repeated treatment and underwent definitive surgery. 15 patients referred to definitive surgery directly after recurrence and one of them had a pelvic recurrence after 120 months. All patients are alive without evidence of disease at last follow-up.

Conclusions: For patients with recurrent EC after primary fertility-preserving treatment, repeated fertility-preserving treatment can still achieve a promising response and patients have possibilities of completing childbirth.