Carcinoma of the endometrium: A study of 256 cases from the Norwegian Radium Hospital

Abstract 256 cases of adenocarcinoma of the uterine body from the most recent 3 year period have been analyzed with regard to the extent of the disease, the various forms of treatment, age differences and the prognosis. An obvious trend is an increase in tumor size with advancing age of the patients, which parallels the drop in survival rates with advancing age. Sixty-one per cent of the patients were treated by hysterectomy followed by irradiation, while 30 per cent received irradiation as the primary treatment. The prognosis gets poorer with the degree of myometrial involvement, and with tumor spread outside of the uterus. The value of external irradiation in preventing pelvic recurrences cannot be proved by the present material, whereas prophylactic irradiation of the vagina seems to prevent the occurrence of vaginal metastases. The comparisons between surgery and radiology as the primary treatment are based on a nonrandomized material. In apparently comparable groups, radium alone or if necessary followed by surgery gives results comparable to those obtained by primary surgery followed by radiation in the age groups below 70 years.