Prevention and treatment of cervical cancer

  Prevention Sexual health education, advocating late marriage and less childbearing, prevention of cervical cancer is divided into three levels of prevention: vaccine application (primary prevention): early use of vaccine for adolescent women to prevent HPV infection.  Cervical screening (secondary prevention): Improve women’s health care network for cancer prevention and carry out regular cervical cytology screening.  Screening and treatment (tertiary prevention): Further screening and treatment for women with abnormal findings to interrupt the lesions in pre-cancerous or early stages.  HPV vaccine German scientist Harald zur Hausen won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the correlation between HPV infection and cervical cancer. As the causes of cervical cancer have become clearer, new advances have been made in research on vaccines for cervical HPV infection, which currently include quadrivalent and bivalent HPV vaccines. The quadrivalent vaccine prevents high-risk HPV 16 and 18 and low-risk HPV 6 and 11 infections. The bivalent vaccine targets the high-risk HPV 16 and 18 subtypes, and the HPV vaccine can block HPV infection to prevent the occurrence of cervical cancer. The U.S. FDA approved the cervical cancer vaccine for clinical use in 2006, targeting HPV subtypes 16, 18, 6, and 11. The recommended age for vaccination is 9 to 26 years old, with the best age being 11 to 12 years old. The HPV vaccine is currently in clinical use in more than 150 countries and regions around the world, and the HPV vaccine in China is in phase III clinical trials.  Treatment of CIN For CIN grade I and CIN grade II, conservative treatment is generally used, including laser, microwave and cryotherapy. For CIN grade III, total hysterectomy is mostly performed. If the patient is young and has fertility requirements, cervical conization is feasible. Regular review after conservative treatment.  Treatment of microscopic early invasive carcinoma Extrafascial total hysterectomy is performed in stage Ia1, and subextensive hysterectomy is performed in stage Ia2.  Treatment of other infiltrating cancers 1.Surgical treatment For stage Ib and IIa cervical cancer, extensive hysterectomy and pelvic lymph node dissection are used. For stage Ib and IIa, the efficacy of surgery and radiotherapy is similar. The choice of treatment method depends on medical equipment and technical conditions as well as patient’s specific conditions. Surgery is generally preferred, especially for young patients who need to preserve ovarian function, combined pregnancy, inflammation in the pelvis and adenocarcinoma that is less sensitive to radiotherapy. For young patients with stage Ia2 and Ib1 cancer <2 cm who need to preserve their reproductive function, extensive hysterectomy with pelvic lymph node dissection can be performed except for lymph node metastasis. Patients who are excessively obese, old and frail as well as those with chronic diseases such as heart and lung are contraindicated for surgery, and radiotherapy should be considered.  2.Radiation therapy is the main treatment method for cervical cancer, which is applicable to patients with stage Ib and all stages after, and can play a palliative role even for stage IV. The two commonly used methods are intracavitary irradiation and extracavitary irradiation. Intracavitary irradiation mostly uses post-mounted treatment machines with radiation sources such as 137 cesium and 192 iridium, which mainly target the primary cervical lesions. Extracavitary irradiation uses 60 cobalt, linear gas pedal, etc., mainly targeting metastases other than the primary lesions, including pelvic lymph nodes.  Pre-operative radiotherapy is suitable for those with large primary lesions or cervical canal cancer with barrel-shaped cervical thickening, which is difficult to be removed by surgery alone. Postoperative radiotherapy is mainly applicable to those who have metastasis in pelvic lymph nodes and parametrial connective tissue and cancer cells in the surgical cutting edge when found during surgery.  4.Chemotherapy In the past 10 years or so, chemotherapy has been used as adjuvant treatment for advanced or recurrent cases and has achieved certain efficacy. Pre-operative neoadjuvant chemotherapy is suitable for those with large stage Ib2 and IIa2 cancer foci, or young stage IIb patients who wish to have surgery to preserve ovarian function and reduce the foci before surgery. After surgery, adjuvant treatment is needed mainly radiotherapy, and currently chemotherapy is also adopted. The effective drugs are cisplatin, cyclophosphamide, isocyclophosphamide, adriamycin, bleomycin, etc. Mostly, cisplatin-based diphasic or triple chemotherapy is used, which is administered via intravenous or regional arterial cannula.