[Stage I and II endometrial cancer: should lymphadenectomy still be done?]

Abstract

Surgical treatment for endometrial carcinomas stage I and II is radical hysterectomy. The role of lymphadenectomy (pelvic and paraaortic) is under discussion. From a retrospective study (multivariate analysis of 320 patients treated by radiosurgical association) and a review of the literature, the authors limit the indications of lymphadenectomy to stage I grade 1 or 2 tumours and without deep tumours invasion into the myometrium (in that case only 10% of pelvic nodes will be involved). Stage II patients or stage I with grade 3 and/or deep tumour invasion into the myometrium do not require lymphadenectomy as post-operative pelvic external beam irradiation will be performed in all cases. Para-aortic lymphadenectomy is not useful as it increases morbidity and the adjuvant treatment in case of lymph node involvement does not improve the survival rate.