Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To examine survival of women with stage IV uterine carcinosarcoma (UCS) who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by hysterectomy. METHODS: This is a nested case-control study within a retrospective cohort of 1192 UCS cases. Women who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by hysterectomy based-surgery for stage IV UCS (n = 26) were compared to those who had primary hysterectomy-based surgery without neoadjuvant chemotherapy for stage IV UCS (n = 120). Progression-free survival (PFS) and cause-specific survival (CSS) were examined. RESULTS: The most common regimen for neoadjuvant chemotherapy was carboplatin/paclitaxel (53.8%). Median number of neoadjuvant chemotherapy cycles was 4. PFS was similar between the neoadjuvant chemotherapy group and the primary surgery group (unadjusted-hazard ratio [HR] 1.19, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.75-1.89, P = 0.45). Similarly, CSS was comparable between the two groups (unadjusted-HR 1.13, 95%CI 0.68-1.90, P = 0.64). When the types of neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens were compared, women who received a carboplatin/paclitaxel regimen had better survival outcomes compared to those who received other regimens: PFS, unadjusted-HR 0.38, 95%CI 0.15-0.93, P = 0.027; and CSS, unadjusted-HR 0.21, 95%CI 0.07-0.61, P = 0.002. CONCLUSION: Our study found that there is no statistically significant difference in survival between women with stage IV UCS who are tolerated neoadjuvant chemotherapy and those who undergo primary surgery.