Sequential radiation therapy and surgery for stage I and stage II cancer of the cervix.

Four hundred and sixty-two patients received primary therapy for cancer of the cervix at the Mayo Clinic from 1950 through 1954. Four hundred and twelve had squamous cell epithelioma and 50 had adenocarcinoma or adenoacanthoma. One hundred and fifty patients had Stage I cancers, whereas 194 had Stage II cancers. Of these 344 patients, 114 were treated by[See figure in the pdf file]full irradiation with subsequent radical surgery, 173 by irradiation only, and 57 by surgery alone.The 5 and 10 year gross survival rates for Stage I showed that survival was best for surgery alone (94.6 and 91.9 per cent, respectively), radiation therapy with surgery was next (88.6 and 85.7 per cent, respectively), and radiation therapy alone was third (67.4 and 63.7 per cent, respectively). However, further analysis showed that the survival rates for surgery alone and radiation therapy with surgery were almost identical when the patients with microinvasive lesions of the cervix were not included. Furthermore, the poor-risk pat...