Definitive Radiotherapy Combined with High-Dose-Rate Brachytherapy for Stage III Carcinoma of the Uterine Cervix: Retrospective Analysis of Prognostic Factors Concerning Patient Characteristics and Treatment Parameters

Purpose: To assess treatment outcome after definitive radiotherapy for Stage III cervical carcinoma retrospective analysis of the clinical data was performed. Methods and Materials: We enrolled 265 patients with Stage III cervical carcinoma who were treated with combined external beam radiotherapy [mean ± standard deviation (SD), 50.3 ± 1.8 Gy; range 40–70) and intracavitary brachytherapy (ICBT) (mean ± SD, 19.8 ± 2.4 Gy; range 10–32) using a high-dose-rate 60Co source. We retrospectively analyzed, as measures of the therapeutic outcome, the overall survival rate (OAS), relapse-free survival rate (RFS), locoregional event-free rate (LREF), distant metastasis (DM), and late complication. Results: The 5-year OAS, RFS, and LREF rates ( n = 265) were 50.7%, 57.1%, and 71.2%, respectively. Univariate analysis revealed a significant favorable effect on the OAS rate for complete response (CR) ( p = 0.024), maximum tumor diameter < 6 cm (SML) ( p = 0.0009), Karnofsky performance score ≧70 ( p = 0.046), age