[Efficacy of combined radiation therapy using different variants of intracavitary gamma therapy in the treatment of patients with cancer of the cervix].

The paper is concerned with the results of a study of efficacy of combined radiation therapy of 771 cervical cancer patients: 153 of them (the 1st group) received standard intracavitary gamma-therapy, 206 (the 2nd group)--intracavitary gamma-therapy based on the principle of successive insertion of endostats and low activity radionuclide sources, and 412 (the 3rd group)--on the principle of successive insertion of high activity sources. The patients were comparable with respect to the main clinical symptoms and biological tumor features. The frequency of radiation reactions and complications turned out to be higher in the 1st group. In the 1st group the 5-year survival rate for patients with stage I cervical cancer was 76.2 +/- 6.9%, for patients with stage II--65.5 +/- 5.1%, for patients with stage III tumors--39.2 +/- 9.2%. For the 2nd group these indices were 95.7 +/- 2.9; 75.1 +/- 4 and 58.5 +/- 7.7%, respectively, for the 3rd group--96.4 +/- 1.6; 85.9 +/- 2.8; 59.7 +/- 9.3%, respectively. The author has proved the advantages of the method of combined radiation therapy of cervical cancer using intracavitary gamma-therapy based on the principle of two-staged successive insertion of endostats and high activity sources.