Introduction: Cervical cancer continues to be a major public health problem affecting middle-aged women, particularly in less-resourced countries. External beam radiation therapy along with intra cavitary insertion has long been the treatment of choice for locally advanced (IIB-IVA) cervical cancer, but long-term successes are limited in terms of pelvic recurrence or distant metastasis. Outcome of low dose daily versus weekly versus three weekly Cisplatin concurrent with External beam radiotherapy in locally advanced cervical carcinoma was compared in this study.
Methods: A prospective cross sectional study was carried out in J K cancer institute, Kanpur. Total 60 patients of cervical cancer were randomized into 3 arms. Arm I, Arm II and Arm III received External beam radiotherapy concurrent with either daily (8mg/m2), weekly (40 mg/m2) or three weekly (100 mg/m2) Cisplatin respectively. External beam radiotherapy was given with a dose of 50 Gy / 25 # / 5 week / 2 field or 4 field. Patients were evaluated weekly during treatment and afterwards up to 1year. Results: Most of the patients were from fourth and fifth decade, low socioeconomic strata and illiterate. Majority of the cases belong to squamous cell carcinoma (96.6%) and stage III B (55%). Objective response in arm I was 80.0%, in arm II was 75.0% and in arm III was 60.0% respectively. Statistically significant difference was noted between arm III and Arm I (80%Vs60% p<0.05). Results were better in arm I as compare to arm II but not statistically significant. (80%Vs75% P>0.05)
Conclusions: This study showed that response was better in ARM I as compared to ARM III and best results was seen with Cisplatin concurrent daily with radiation.
Keywords: Cisplatin, concurrent chemotherapy, daily, weekly, three weekly, carcinoma cervix