High Dose Rate Brachytherapy for Inoperable Endometrial Cancer: a Case Series and Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

Endometrial cancer is a common gynaecological cancer, is typically early stage and treated with surgery. For patients where surgery is difficult or dangerous, definitive radiation therapy is the next best option. This study included a single institution case series (step 1) and a systematic review of the literature (step 2). In step 1, all endometrial cancer cases that were treated with definitive image-guided brachytherapy at a single institution from 2008 to 2020 were retrospectively analysed. In step 2, a systematic review of Medline (PubMed) from 1975 to 2020 was carried out using the key words around endometrial cancer and brachytherapy, followed by a narrative synthesis. In total, in step 1, 31 cases were included in this study, stages I-IV, with 96.7% receiving external beam radiation. All patients received three fractions of 7.5 Gy or five fractions of 6 Gy high dose rate brachytherapy, with a median EQD2 of 75.55 (40-84.3). The 2-year Kaplan-Meier (KM) local control was 83.1% and the 2-year KM overall survival was 77.4%. There was no late toxicity ≥grade 3. In step 2, 19 articles were included in the final analysis, with between six and 280 patients. The local control ranged from 70 to 100%, with low toxicity. Definitive radiation therapy with image-guided brachytherapy seems to have good local control with low toxicity for patients who are poor surgical candidates.

Keywords: Brachytherapy; endometrial carcinoma; image-guided brachytherapy; radiation therapy; systematic review; uterine cancer.