The Clinical Outcome of Patients with Microinvasive Cervical Carcinoma

Cervical cancer, the second most common cancer in women, develops through well-defined precursor lesions with potential to progress to invasive disease if not properly detected and eradicated. In cervical carcinogenesis, human papillomavirus (HPV) plays an important causal role. Besides the evidental causal role in cervical carcinogenesis, HPV is an important prognostic factor for disease progression as well (Syrjänen, 2000). Early invasive carcinoma is an intermediate state in the development of invasive carcinoma from a cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. According to clinical experience, the early stage of invasion has much better prognosis when compared to an advanced invasive cancer. This warrants the recognition of microinvasive carcinoma (MIC) as a separate entity among cervical cancer that is not visible at inspection, and therefore only diagnosed by histological examination of a biopsy specimen that contains the complete lesion (Wright et al., 1994).