Balloon-occluded arterial infusion chemotherapy, simple total hysterectomy, and radiotherapy as a useful combination-therapy for advanced cancer of the uterine cervix.

We first performed 3 or 4 courses of balloon-occluded arterial infusion (BOAI) chemotherapy in 19 patients with advanced cancer of uterine cervix classified as stage III-IV according to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. In the patients in whom the first BOAI resulted in insufficient drug accumulation in tumor tissue, the ovarian arteries and veins were ligated to improve the therapeutic effect. Ultimately simple total hysterectomy and radiotherapy were performed in 9 patients in whom the uterus was resectable (the combination group), and radiotherapy alone was conducted in the other 10 patients in whom hysterectomy was not practicable (the incomplete group). The survival rates were significantly higher in the combination group (2-year survival 88. 9%; 5-year survival 66.7%) than in the incomplete group (p=0.0013).