Role of locoregional surgery in treating FIGO 2009 stage IVB cervical cancer patients: a population-based study

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to analyse the clinical value of primary site surgery in improving the cancer-specific survival (CSS) and overall survival (OS) of initial metastatic cervical cancer patients. DESIGN: A population-based retrospective study. SETTING: National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database. PARTICIPANTS: We analysed 1390 patients with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics 2009 stage IVB cervical cancer with complete clinical data treated between 2010 and 2016. INTERVENTIONS: Primary site surgery. MEASURES: Propensity score matching (PSM) with a ratio of 1:2 was used to balance measure covariates of comparison groups. Survival time was calculated using Kaplan-Meier methods and compared by the log-rank test. To eliminate the bias of site-specific metastasis, clinicopathological factors and subsequent therapy on survival analysis, subgroup analyses stratified by metastasis type, clinicopathological factors and subsequent therapy were employed to evaluate the effect of cervical surgery on survival. Combination of directed acyclic graph and change-in-estimate procedures was performed to indentified confounders, and Cox regression was used to assess the survival benefit of cervical surgery for primary metastatic cervical cancer patients. The consistency of our findings was evaluated through sensitivity analysis. RESULTS: Matching resulted in two comparison groups with minor differences in most variables. Pre-and-post-PSM, the median CSS and OS in the surgery group were 1.3 and 1.5, 1.1 and 1.2 times of those in the non-surgery group, respectively. Primary site surgery conferred prognosis superiority for patients with metastases to distant lymph node and other sites rather than organ metastases. After PSM and adjusting confounders, local surgery reduced the cancer related and overall mortality rates by 31% and 30%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Surgical procedures could promote survival in patients with primary metastatic cervical cancer and should be considered a therapeutic option for carefully chosen patients.