Definitive treatment of primary vaginal cancer with radiotherapy: multi- institutional retrospective study of the Korean Radiation Oncology Group

Objective: To assess the outcome of the treatment of primary vaginal cancer using definitive radiotherapy (RT) and to evaluate the prognostic factors of survival. Methods: The medical records of nine institutions were retrospectively reviewed to find the patients with vaginal cancer treated with definitive RT with or without chemotherapy. A total of 138 patients met the inclusion criteria. None had undergone curative excision. Results: The median follow-up time of the survivors was 77.6 months and the median survival time was 46.9 months. The 5-year overall survival, cancer-specific survival (CSS), and progression-free survival (PFS) rates were 68%, 80%, and 68.7%, respectively. In the survival analysis, the multivariate analysis showed that a lower the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage and prior hysterectomy were favorable prognostic factors of CSS, and a lower FIGO stage and diagnosed prior to year 2000 were favorable prognostic factors of PFS. In the subgroup analysis of the patients with available human papillomavirus (HPV) results (n=27), no statistically significant relationship between the HPV status and recurrence or survival was found. Grade 3 or 4 acute and late toxicity were present in 16 and 9 patients, respectively. The FIGO stage and the tumor size were predictors of severe late toxicity. Original Article Received: Sep 2, 2015 Revised: Sep 29, 2015 Accepted: Oct 7, 2015 Correspondence to Hak Jae Kim Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, Korea. E-mail: [email protected] *The first two authors contributed equally to this study. Copyright © 2016. Asian Society of Gynecologic Oncology, Korean Society of Gynecologic Oncology This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. J Gynecol Oncol. 2016 Mar;27(2):e17 http://doi.org/10.3802/jgo.2016.27.e17