CHEMOTHERAPY IN METASTATIC ENDOMETRIAL CA RCINOMA - REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Endometrial carcinoma is one of the most common gynaecological cancers in Western countries. About 75% of the patients present limited disea se, confined to the uterus that can be cured by surgery. However, one third of the patients will need systemic treatment because of metastat ic or relapsing disease. Hormonotherapy response rates are less than 2 0%. In monochemotherapy, the higher response rates are constantly obse rved with doxorubicin or cisplatinum (25-35%). Most commonly used comb ination are CAP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, cisplatinum) or AP (do xorubicin, cisplatinum), giving 35 to 60% of objective responses. Rece nt results of large randomized trials have demonstrated marginal, if a ny, effect of cyclophosphamide and superiority of doxorubicin-cisplati num combination compared to doxorubicin alone for response and surviva l. Chemotherapy as hormonotherapy remains palliative. Median response duration is 4 to 6 months and median overall survival duration is 7 to 10 months. Currently, hormonotherapy-chemotherapy combination have no t been proved to be more effective than chemotherapy alone.