A critical review of the frequency of lymph node metastasis and death from microinvasive carcinoma of the cervix.

The lack of a uniform, specific definition of microinvasive carcinoma of the cervix has made it difficult to extract from the literature a sufficient number of cases similarly defined from which to estimate the risk of nodal metastasis or death from tumor. Factors potentially biasing the frequency of nodal metastasis and death from tumor are examined, and series lacking such factors are used to provide estimates of the risk of metastasis or death from tumor for various specific definitions, but the number of cases fitting each definition are too few at present to give reliable estimates.