Summary
Revista Brasileira de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia. 2002;24(10):675-680
DOI 10.1590/S0100-72032002001000007
PURPOSE: to evaluate neoadjuvant chemotherapy in locally advanced cervical cancer as to its acceptability, tolerability, toxicity, surgical complications, operability, response rate, and overall survival in 5 years. METHODS: sixty women with locally advanced cervical cancer (stages IIB and IIIB), who were submitted to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, were included. All patients were treated with doxorubicin-bleomycin-cisplatin. Those who had a good response, allowing a surgical approach, underwent the Wertheim-Meigs procedure. After surgery, they were submitted to pelvic radiotherapy. Those that could not be submitted to surgery after chemotherapy underwent total radiotherapy. RESULTS: the average follow-up was 108 months, and 80% of the patients had an overall response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In the IIB group, the response rate was 100%, and in the IIIB group it was 60%. The operability rate after neoadjuvant chemotherapy was 65%. The overall survival in 5 years was 62%. Comparing the operated group (n=34) with the nonoperated group (n=18), the overall survival in 5 years was 82.14 and 16.67%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: neoadjuvant chemotherapy with doxorubicin-bleomycin-cisplatin for locally advanced cervical cancer is safe, with a low rate of side effects, and allowed a high operability rate.
Summary
Revista Brasileira de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia. 2002;24(2):81-86
DOI 10.1590/S0100-72032002000200002
Purpose: to evaluate the predictive capacity of the sentinel lymph node (SLN) in relation to the axillary lymph node status in patients with initial invasive breast carcinoma submitted or not to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Method: a prospective study was performed in 112 patients divided into two groups. The first group comprised 70 patients who had not received previous chemotherapy (Group I) and the second consisted of 42 patients who were submitted to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in three cycles of AC (adriamycin + cyclophosphamide) (Group II). Regarding chemotherapy, we observed partial response >50% in 21 patients, being complete in three of them, and <50% in 19 patients; in two patients progression of the disease occurred. A peritumoral injection of 99mTc dextran was applied with the help of stereotaxy in 29 patients with nonpalpable tumors, 16 of Group I and 13 of Group II. The radioactive accumulation shown by scintigraphy guided the biopsy of the axillary SLN with the help of a probe. The anatomopathologic study of SLN was based initially on a single section. When the LSN was free, it was submitted to serial sections at 50 mum intervals, stained with HE. Results: SLN was identified in 108 patients. No identification has been obtained in four patients, all with nonpalpable lesions (3 patients of Group I and 1 of Group II). The method's accuracy in predicting the axillary lymph node status was 100% in patients who did not receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy and 93% in those to whom this kind of treatment was administered. This difference proved to be statistically significant. Conclusions: the present study allowed us to conclude that in all patients who did not receive previous chemotherapy treatment, the SLN study was effective in predicting the axillary lymph node status. The high rate of false-negative results in the group of patients submitted to neoadjuvant chemotherapy seems to invalidate the use of SLN study these patients.