Uterine sarcoma: twenty-seven years of experience

Abstract

Purpose: A correlation of treatment for uterine sarcoma with outcome, prognostic importance of pathology, and clinical parameters.

Patients and methods: One hundred forty-one patients (median age: 56 years, range: 19-85 years) with a histologically verified uterine sarcoma were identified from a database compiled at the Royal Marsden Hospital and the University of Florence between 1974 and 2001. Seventy-two patients had leiomyosarcoma, 42 had mixed müllerian tumors, 22 had endometrial stromal sarcoma, 1 hemangiopericytoma, 1 rhabdomyosarcoma, and 3 patients had unspecified sarcoma. According to FIGO classification, Stage I, II, III, and IV tumors were identified in 71, 13, 31, and 26 patients, respectively.

Results: At the time of analysis, 73.7% of patients were dead, and 26.3% were alive with a median survival of 2 years from initial diagnosis. Univariate analysis for cause-specific survival demonstrated statistical significance for histology (p = 0.02), grade (p = 0.003), stage (p = 0.007), and age (p = 0.02). Multivariate analysis demonstrated significant prognostic values for stage (p = 0.02) and histology (p = 0.05) only. Postoperative radiotherapy with a total dose higher than 50 Gy seems to be significant (p = 0.001) in reducing local recurrence.

Conclusions: Our data favor treatment for Stages I, II, and III of uterine sarcoma with radical surgery plus radical dose irradiation comprising both external beam radiotherapy and brachytherapy.