Overall survival associated with surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy in metastatic vulvar cancer: A retrospective cohort study based on the SEER database

Background

Large cancer registries help analyze the prognosis of rare malignancies, such as advanced vulvar cancer. This study aimed to compare the overall survival (OS) rates of patients with metastatic vulvar cancer who had undergone chemoradiotherapy and radiotherapy alone and identify prognostic factors using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry.

Methods

In this retrospective cohort study, we used the SEER database to identify patients with metastatic vulvar cancer diagnosed between 2000 and 2019. Propensity score matching was performed to balance the covariates. Kaplan–Meier curves and Cox models were used to analyze OS.

Results

A total of 685 patients were included and divided into chemoradiotherapy and radiotherapy groups, and 400 patients were included after propensity score matching. The chemoradiotherapy group had higher OS in the matched cohort (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.7367; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.5906–0.9190; P = 0.0049) than the radiotherapy group, which was similar to that in the pre-matched cohort (P < 0.0001). Patients who had undergone surgery + radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy showed higher OS rates than those who had received radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy for patients aged <75 years and local tumor excision/destruction or surgical removal of the primary site was the recommended surgical choice (P < 0.05). Chemoradiotherapy is sufficient for patients ≥75 years of age.

Conclusions

Patients with metastatic vulvar cancer should undergo surgery if they can tolerate it. Adjuvant chemoradiotherapy should be encouraged because this treatment modality was associated with higher OS than radiotherapy alone.