Radiation for cervical cancer impacts sex life
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Women with cervical cancer that’s treated with radiation have worse sexual functioning years after treatment than women who undergo surgery for the disease, a new study shows.
In fact, women whose cervical cancer was treated surgically—by removal of the uterus and any surrounding cancerous lymph nodes—had sexual functioning identical to that of healthy women, Dr. Michael Frumovitz of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and colleagues found.
Given that hysterectomy is the most common surgery performed in the United States, Frumovitz told Reuters Health, the finding that the operation does not impair sexual functioning is an important take-home message of the study.
Both surgical and radiation treatment for cervical cancer carry a range of side effects, Frumovitz and his team note in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Radiotherapy can cause changes in the structure of the vagina, as well as the tissue lining the vagina, while complications of surgery include blood loss and blood clots.
The researchers set out to compare the quality of life in patients with early-stage disease that could have been treated with either approach. Their analysis included 37 women treated surgically, 37 women treated with radiation, and a comparison group of 40 healthy women. Patients were followed up at least five years after treatment.
The women treated with radiation therapy had significantly poorer scores on questionnaires measuring quality of life, sexual function and levels of distress. When the researchers adjusted for other factors that could have affected the results, only sexual functioning remained significantly different.
However, there were no differences between the women treated surgically and the healthy women on any of the quality of life and sexual functioning measures.
“We found, at least in our population, that a radical hysterectomy does not change sexual function when compared to women who have never had a hysterectomy,” Frumovitz told Reuters Health.
For women who have cervical cancer that could be treated equally well with radiation or surgery, the study provides evidence that surgery would be preferable, he added.
“If your physician thinks that you could go either way with radiation or surgery, we would say that our findings suggest that you’d be better off with surgery in the long run if its sort of an even, 50-50 type of scenario.”
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Oncology, October 20, 2005.
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