Chemoradiation in the management of cervix cancer: current status and future directions.

Cytotoxic chemotherapy has been shown to have only a very modest impact on outcome in recurrent, persistent, or metastatic cervix cancer. Despite this fact, when cisplatin is administered concurrently with external beam radiation as a 'chemosensitizing' strategy, both progression-free and overall survival have been shown in multiple evidence-based randomized trials to be improved compared to the delivery of radiation alone. Ongoing research in this area has focused on improving the drug component of this strategy and on following the concurrent chemoradiation with systemic ('adjuvant') therapy.