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Cancer of the uterine cervix is one of the leading gynecological malignancies of developing nations including India. A 45-year-old female presented with menstrual irregularities and other nonspecific symptoms. After initial workup, she was diagnosed with carcinoma cervix, Stage IV A, while she was being planned to take up radical concomitant chemoradiotherapy, she developed widespread nodules over various sites over the body, which were histopathologically proven as metastatic lesions. She was treated with a palliative intent by radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Only a few such cases have been reported in the literature with variable outcomes. These rare presentations should be thoroughly worked up and studied to know more about their biological behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Pain and palliative care clinic (PCC)., Aims: The primary object of this study was to enumerate the demographic characteristics of patients attending a newly organized PCC. The secondary purpose was to detect symptom prevalence and frequency of different cancers in these patients., Settings and Design: Prospective cross-sectional descriptive study., Materials and Methods: A prospective cross-sectional descriptive study was done on patients referred to the PCC of a tertiary hospital in North India. Comprehensive details of all patients were recorded systematically on the first visit on a proforma specially prepared for the newly established palliative care clinic., Statistical Analysis Used: The descriptive statistics of palliative care data was presented in terms of frequencies and percentages (%) for categorical variables., Results: The data collected at our PCC showed that out of 156 patients, 87 were males and 69 were females. Patients of all ages varying from 6 to 85 years were seen. Most patients (82.1%) lived with their families, and 28 (17.1%) patients lived alone and had no financial support. The most common primary diagnoses were head and neck cancers (38.5%), carcinoma cervix (15.4%), breast cancer (10.3%), colorectal cancer (6.4%), and lung cancer (4.5%). Frequency of seven most common symptoms was pain (100%), insomnia (64.1%), loss of appetite (34.6%), nausea (32.7%), vomiting (32.1%), constipation (31.4%) and sore mouth (28.8%)., Conclusions: Population-based studies determine the actual magnitude of sufferers and suffering and show that palliative care services should be included as an essential component in a tertiary care hospital. The objective should be to reach out to the patient and help in improving the patent's quality of life in every way possible.

One thousand six hundred ninety-four (1694) cases of carcinoma cervix have been reviewed out of a total of 11919 malignancies, over a period of 4 years (1992-1995), in the department of radiotherapy, Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi. The epidemiological features studied showed that there was a gradual decline in the total number of cases, age at presentation and parity. There has been a definite increase in the proportion of adenocarcinoma cases. Adenocarcinoma of cervix showed statistically significant preponderance in comparatively younger age group viz, 40-60 years (p < 0.005); 76% of overall cases were illiterate; 77% of cases belonged to rural/urban slum settings compared to 23% which were purely urban in origin. About 65% cases had haemoglobin levels below 10 g/dl at the time of presentation.