Survival in patients with cervical cancer

Abstract

Objective:To estimate 5 year calculate the five-yearcumulative survival probability of a patient cohort diag-nosed with interine cervical cancer during 1999.

Methods:To analyse of the information, we used frequen-cy distributions with absolute values as well as percentages,measures of central tendency as well as of variance. Therelation ship between cualitative variables was done bymeans of a chi square statistical test. A p value less or equalto 0.05, was significant.

The cumulative survival probability was done using theKaplan-Meier method. The comparison between the sur-vival times was done using a logarithmic range test. Thelevel of significance was again fixed at less or equal to 0.05.

Results:A total of 778 cases were studied at the end of thestudy period, 91 patients had died. The 5 year, cumulativesurvival probability for the whole population was 88.3%.The patients in which carcinoma in situ was detected at thetime of diagnosis, showed a cumulative survival probabili-ty of 98.8% while those with invasive carcinoma had avalue of 68.3%. This difference was statistically significant.

The cumulative survival probability for the patients diag-nosed with squamous cell carcinoma was 89% while thosewith adenocarcinoma had a value of 80%. This differencedid not fall within the range of statistical significance,though.

Conclusions:If we compare our results with similar inves-tigations done elsewhere, we can see that our values aresuperior to those seen in countries with a level of develop-ment lower than that of Costa Rica and that, they are simi-lar of those of developed countries. With the resultsobtained, we could assume that the cumulative survivalprobabilities are greater in those patients in whom the diag-nosis of cervical cancer is done at a young age; in addition,this may be related to the high proportion of carcinoma insitu cases diagnosed at this stage in life when the prognosisfor this illness is more favorable.