Improved outcomes of palliative radiotherapy combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors in recurrent or metastatic cervical cancers

[Display omitted] •Immunotherapy plus palliative radiotherapy can provide survival benefits.•Patients with only recurrence have longer survival rates.•An increased number of immunotherapy cycles can improve patient survival. Immunotherapy provides a remarkable survival advantage for patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer (R/M CC). However, the role of immunotherapy in combination with radiotherapy in R/M CC remains unclear. We retrospectively analyzed factors affecting immunotherapy effectiveness in patients with R/M CC. Clinical outcomes including tumor response and patient survival were assessed. Kaplan-Meier curves with the log-rank test were employed to compare survival data. Cox regression analysis was utilized to investigate prognostic factors. A total of 65 R/M CC patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors were eligible for analysis. We found that immunotherapy combined with palliative radiotherapy showed a significant positive correlation with complete response (OR = 6.31; 95 %CI: 1.74–22.91; p = 0.005). The 36-month progression-free survival (PFS) rate (73.7 % vs 33.8 %, p = 0.0048) and 36-month overall survival (OS) rate (85.7 % vs 38.7 %, p = 0.0043) were also prominently increased. We further demonstrated that patients prolonged 36-month PFS rate (69.9 % vs 15.2 %; p