Palliative Electrochemotherapy in Vulvar Carcinoma: Preliminary Results of the ELECHTRA (Electrochemotherapy Vulvar Cancer) Multicenter Study.
Anna Myriam PerroneAndrea GaluppiCecilia PirovanoGiulia BorghesePiero CovarelliFrancesca De TerlizziMartina FerioliSilvia CaraAlessio Giuseppe MorgantiPierandrea De IacoPublished in: Cancers (2019)
Vulvar cancer (VC) is a rare disease of which recurrence poses management problems due to patients' advanced age and comorbidities, and to the localization of the disease. Palliative treatments, allowing local disease control in patients previously treated with multimodal therapies or with comorbidities, are lacking. In this study we tested electrochemotherapy (ECT) on recurrent VC refractory to standard therapies to assess the tumor response and to define the selection criteria for patient's candidate to ECT. This is a multicenter observational study carried out in five Italian centers. Data about patients and tumor characteristics, treatment, toxicity, and clinical response were recorded. In all procedures, intravenous bleomycin was administered according to European Standard Operative Procedure ECT (ESOPE) guidelines. Sixty-one patients, with a median age 79 years (range: 39-85) and mainly affected by squamous cellular carcinoma (91.8%), were treated with ECT. No serious adverse events were reported. Patients were discharged after three days (median, range: 0-8 days). Two months after ECT, the clinical response rate was 83.6% and was not related to age, body mass index, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage, number of treated nodules, or previous treatments. ECT is a safe procedure with a favorable cost-effectiveness ratio and should be considered as a treatment option for local disease control in patients unsuitable for standard therapies.
Keyphrases
- end stage renal disease
- newly diagnosed
- chronic kidney disease
- peritoneal dialysis
- prognostic factors
- oxidative stress
- mental health
- palliative care
- machine learning
- squamous cell carcinoma
- chronic pain
- low dose
- radiation therapy
- lymph node
- minimally invasive
- young adults
- cross sectional
- artificial intelligence
- sentinel lymph node
- drug induced
- deep learning
- data analysis
- childhood cancer
- oxide nanoparticles
- advanced cancer