Medroxyprogesterone acetate release from Silastic devices as replacement for local irradiation by radium tubes in preoperative intrauterine packing for endometrial adenocarcinoma: A preliminary study

For radioprotective purposes a preliminary evaluation is made of the possibility of substituting local hormonotherapy by means of a medroxyprogesterone-releasing intrauterine Silastic device for conventional radium packing as a preoperative procedure in the therapeutic scheme of Stage I endometrial adenocarcinoma. Anatomopathologic examination of operative specimens belonging to 17 experimental patients and to 27 control patients revealed no important differences; both preoperative procedures produced a total destruction of endometrial adenocarcinoma in about 60% of the cases without myometrial invasion. These data have induced the start of a large-scale randomized trial on this problem.