Comparison of laparoscopic and abdominal radical hysterectomy for early stage cervical cancer: oncologic outcomes based on tumor diameter

Background: Early stage cervical cancer is prevalent in China and remains a major public health burden in developing countries. We aimed to determine the long term oncologic outcomes between laparoscopic and abdominal radical hysterectomy in patients with early cervical cancer.

Methods: We conducted a multicenter, retrospective, case-control study of 37 hospitals. All consecutive early stage cervical cancer patients with International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) 2009 stage IA1 with lymphovascular space invasion to IB1, who underwent laparoscopic or abdominal radical hysterectomy between January 2004 and December 2016, were included. We compared the disease free survival and overall survival of the two approaches in 1:1 case-control matched settings based on prognosis related factors.

Results: We selected 8470 of 46 313 patients. After matching (n=1601/1601), we found that laparoscopic surgery was associated with significantly worse 5 year disease free survival (89.5% vs 93.1%, p=0.001; hazard ratio (HR) 1.60, p=0.001), but not 5 year overall survival (94.3% vs 96.0%, HR=1.48, p=0.058). In the subgroup analysis, in patients with a tumor diameter <2 cm (n=739/739), both 5 year disease free survival and overall survival were similar between the laparoscopic and abdominal radical hysterectomy groups. However, when tumor diameter was 2-4 cm (n=898/898), laparoscopic surgery was a poor prognosis risk factor for 5 year disease free survival (84.7% vs 90.8%, p=0.001; HR=1.81, p<0.001), but not 5 year overall survival (90.9% vs 93.8%, p=0.077; HR=1.53, p=0.059).

Conclusions: In patients with early cervical cancer, laparoscopic radical hysterectomy was associated with significantly poorer long term oncologic outcome, although in patients with tumors <2 cm, the 5 year overall survival and 5 year disease free survival were similar.