Prognosis impact of posttreatment pelvic MRI in patients treated for stage IB2-IIB cervical cancer with chemoradiation therapy

International audience; OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the performances of systematic posttreatment pelvic magnetic resonance imaging (PPMRI) in predicting prognosis of patients treated with chemoradiation therapy (CRT) for locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Multi-institutional data from 216 patients presenting FIGO IB2-IIB cervical cancer for which PPMRI was performed following CRT were retrospectively reviewed. Incomplete response was defined as the identification of persistent lesion on PPMRI. Primary endpoints were patients’ 5-year recurrence free (RFS) and overall (OS) survivals. Secondary endpoint was the identification of residual histologic disease on hysterectomy specimens when completion surgery was performed. RESULTS: PPMRI identified an incomplete response in 102 (47.2%) cases. A 70% or more reduction in tumor size on PPMRI was identified as the best predictive cut-off for recurrence (37.7% sensitivity and 78.7% specificity) and death (50% sensitivity and 77.9% specificity) with significant impact on those risks (HRa: 0.42; 95%CI: 0.23-0.77 and HRa: 0.18; 95%CI: 0.06-0.50, respectively). Completion hysterectomy was performed in 117 (54.4%) cases, with histologic residual disease in 55 (47.4%). PPMRI demonstrated 74.5% sensitivity and 50.8% specificity in predicting residual disease. Although survival of patients with complete response at PPMRI was not impacted by completion hysterectomy, it significantly increased 5-year RFS and OS of those with incomplete response: 38.7% vs. 65.3% (p