The Association of Preoperative PET-CT and Survival in Patients with Resectable Cervical Cancer.

PURPOSE: No randomized study with a long-term follow-up has investigated the effect of pretreatment 18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography-computed tomography (18 FDG-PET-CT) on the survival of patients with stage IB-IIA cervical cancer receiving curative surgery. Therefore, in this propensity score-matched, population-based cohort study, we investigated the effect of preoperative 18 FDG-PET-CT on the survival outcomes of patients with potentially resectable cervical cancer.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: We included 2550 patients with stage IB-IIA cervical cancer receiving curative surgery with complete data on clinical stages. The patients were categorized into two 1:4 propensity, score-matched groups depending on whether they underwent pretreatment 18 FDG-PET-CT, and their outcomes were compared.

RESULTS: We included 2030 and 520 patients with cervical cancer in the non-pretreatment and pretreatment PET-CT groups, respectively. Multivariable analyses revealed that the most prominent correlation between preoperative PET-CT and all-cause death was observed in the patients with stage IB-IIA cervical cancer receiving surgery (aHR [95% CI]: 1.16 [0.83-1.63]; p = 0.3752).

CONCLUSIONS: Preoperative 18 FDG-PET-CT was not associated with longer survival in the patients with clinical stage IB-IIA cervical cancer receiving curative surgery.