Controversies and Advances in the Personalized Surgical Treatment of Cervical Cancer

Abstract

Cervical cancer represents a global health issue as it is mostly encountered in women of reproductive age, while at the same time, survival outcomes seem to have remained constant during the last two decades. The need to implement fertility-sparing strategies as well as to decrease the morbidity that accompanies radical treatment has been extensively studied. During the last decade, several randomized clinical trials have been released, resulting in significant advances in the surgical treatment of early-stage disease. At the same time, evidence about the surgical treatment of advanced-stage disease as well as recurrent disease has gradually appeared and seems to be promising, thus leading the point forward towards personalized medicine that will remove the surgical barriers that seem concrete in our era. Nevertheless, the discrepancies in perioperative morbidity and survival outcomes that were observed among published studies raise several questions. In the present article, we chose to review the gray fields in the surgical treatment of early-stage and advanced-stage cervical cancer. Studies that are based on strong evidence that support current clinical practice are compared to smaller cohorts that present novel data that may form the basis for future research, and issues that remain poorly explored are discussed in an effort to help establish a consensus for future research development.

Keywords

• cervical cancer
• personalized treatment
• survival outcomes
• novel approaches