Less radical surgery for women with early stage cervical cancer: Our experience on radical vaginal trachelectomy and laparoscopic pelvic lymphadenectomy

We report the use of radical vaginal trachelectomy (RVT) with pelvic laparoscopic lymphadenectomy (LPL) in patients with early stages cervical cancer (FIGO stage IA2-IB1). This is a case series prospectively collected over a 6-year period (2011–2017) at the Ipswich hospital, UK. Cases were compared to a group of women with a similar stage of cervical cancer, but treated with radical hysterectomy (RH) and pelvic lymphadenectomy (PL). A total of 19 patients (group 1) underwent RVT and LPL, and 51 (group 2) had RH and PL. We included: 5/19 (26%) stage IA2 and 14/19 (74%) stage IB1. Among those, we had: 12/19 (63%) cases of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), 7/19(37%) of adenocarcinoma. Mean hospital stay was 2.7 days (range 2–4) in group 1 versus 4.8 days (range 3–8) group 2 (p-value = 0.173). The complication rate was not statistically different between the two groups 4/19(21%) and 7/51(14%) (p-value 0.169). The mean follow-up period was 47.3 months (range 7–78) in both groups. There were no cases of recurrence in group 1 and 2/51(4%) cases in group 2, but the difference was not significant (p-value = 0.497). In our experience RVT in well-selected patients is a safe treatment option with similar oncological outcomes when compared to patients undergoing more extensive surgery for the same early stage cervical cancer.