Advances in diagnosis, staging, and management of cervical and endometrial cancer, stages I and II

The majority of patients with low stage cervical and endometrial cancer are cured. Results obtained in the past only in the categorical cancer centers are currently being achieved more broadly. This reflects the work of formally trained gynecologic oncologists often in collaboration with formally trained radiation therapists distributing themselves in a horizontal fashion to more and more university medical centers, teaching hospitals, and quality tertiary hospitals in the private sector. The formalization of training in gynecologic oncology has been pivotal in this development. This group of physicians, working with physicians in other disciplines, have impacted significantly on patient care and have provided many clinical and pathologic studies to better define favorable low stage cases and poor prognosis cases. The need to explore the use of currently available modalities in a variety of different combinations and to define and develop new techniques to apply to these poor prognosis subsets of disease represent areas of progress and challenge.