DIFFICULTIES USING THE FRANCO-ITALIAN GLOSSARY IN ASSESSING TOXICITY OF CERVICAL-CANCER TREATMENT

We assessed the toxicities of patients treated for cervical canter usi ng the revised France-Italian Glossary (FIG). A total of 69 separate c omplications were appraised in 47 patients; however, only 43.5% of the se side-effects could be accurately graded. In all, 56.5% of toxicitie s could not be scored for a variety of reasons: (1) the FIG does not a ccount for all possible complications of cervical cancer treatment; (2 ) some important toxicities are regarded as too minor to be graded; (3 ) subjective assessment of some side-effects did not allow consensus t o be reached when assigning a grade; (4) we could not accurately score toxicities using the FIG in a retrospective manner. Previous studies utilizing the FIG retrospectively have noted few problems with its use , with no indication of the number of toxicities unable to be graded. In view of the inability to grade the majority of complications in the present study in an accurate manner, we conclude that the revised FIG requires detailed data that are best collected prospectively and that several minor modifications of the glossary should be considered. Res ults of studies using the glossary retrospectively should be viewed wi th caution.