IS THERE A PLACE FOR CHEMOTHERAPY IN THE INITIAL TREATMENT FOR CERVICAL-CANCER - LITERATURE-REVIEW

Despite their high efficiency in treating cancer of the uterine cervix surgery and radiotherapy can not dire (local and/or metastatic diseas e) a certain number of patients with initially adverse risk factors, m ostly local or regionally advanced cervical carcinoma (stage III-IVA) or early stage (IB-II) disease with bulky primary lesion or involved r egional nodes. Since the 1980s, many investigators have tried to deter mine whether or not there is any benefit in introducing chemotherapy e arlier in the therapeutic plan for these patients: either initially be fore surgery or radiotherapy (neoadjuvant) or during radiotherapy (con current), or after local treatment (adjuvant). In this review we seek to sum up the published data available and to determine if at present there is a place for chemotherapy in the initial treatment of cervical cancer.