Radiotherapy for endometrial cancer: improved patient selection, techniques and outcomes

Abstract

Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most common gynaecological cancer in developed countries. Standard treatment consists of surgery (hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy) followed by either no adjuvant treatment, vaginal brachytherapy (VBT) or external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) with or without chemotherapy. The type of adjuvant treatment is based on clinicopathologic risk factors as age, FIGO-stage, histologic type and grade, myometrial invasion and lymph-vascular space invasion. In the recent years, knowledge has been gained on molecular risk factors in EC and four different molecular subgroups with distinct prognosis have been defined. The implementation of these subgroups into the treatment guidelines is being investigated in the PORTEC-4a trial. In this trial women with high-intermediate risk EC are randomised to either VBT versus an experimental arm in which a molecular-integrated risk profile is used to guide adjuvant treatment. With the improved patient selection women with favourable prognosis can be spared unnecessary treatment, while those with unfavourable prognosis are treated with more intensive treatment (EBRT). Besides the improvement of patient selection, radiotherapy techniques have developed as well. Modern radiotherapy techniques can increasingly spare healthy tissues with comparable outcomes and less toxicity. These developments will lead to better results and higher(er) quality-of-life for women with EC.