Evaluation of Cervical Cancer Staging Based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Comparison with Surgical Staging

Background: Cervical cancer is prevalent cancer among women that correct diagnosis has very important role in its treatment. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in comparison with surgical staging. Also, we compared the accuracy of physical examination with surgical pathology. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study was performed on women who had cervical cancer from the start of 2017 to the end of 2021. Age, tumor pathology report (squamous cell carcinoma, clear cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, and small cell carcinoma), stage of the tumor, involvement of vagina, uterine, and parametrium, cervical stroma invasion, mass size, pelvic and abductor lymph node metastasis were extracted from the patient’s data and all were evaluated. The pathology report was considered as the gold standard. Results: Eighty women with cervical cancer were evaluated and the mean age was 47.3 years. There was a statistically significant difference between the different prevalence of disease stages (P-value = 0.035) and also stage diagnosis between the three methods (P-value = 0.0004). The diagnostic accuracy of physical examination and MRI in terms of vaginal involvement, parametrium involvement, and uterine involvement were 97.5% and 98.7%; 98.7% and 96.2%; 94.9% and 93.6%; respectively. Conclusions: Magnetic resonance imaging is a good method for the assessment of the clinical staging of cervical cancer and its accuracy is more than 94% in the diagnosis of different parts of cervical cancer involvement.