LAUSR

PurposeThe potential therapeutic benefits of lymphadenectomy in endometrial cancer (EC) patients are still ambiguous. Therefore, a population-based retrospective analysis was conducted to determine the association between lymphadenectomy and survival in elderly female patients with stage I endometrioid EC.MethodsThe Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program database was retrospectively analyzed, and data of 63,372 female patients with early-stage type I EC from 1988 to 2013 were collected. The main patient and tumor characteristics included marital status, age, ethnicity, time of diagnosis, tumor grade, radiotherapy, and lymphadenectomy status. Kaplan–Meier and Cox proportional hazard regression analyses were performed to determine the association between lymph node dissection and the overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival in women older than 50 years with stage I endometrioid EC.ResultsThe majority (83.7%) of the patients who met the inclusion criteria for the study were older than 50 years. In both grade 1 and 2 patients aged over 50 years, lymph node conservation was associated with a higher mortality risk compared to lymphadenectomy (all P < 0.005). Multivariate analysis indicated that lymphadenectomy was an independent predictor of improved OS in early-stage type 1 EC patients, with hazard ratios of 0.893 and 0.827 for the grade 1 and grade 2 patients, respectively (P < 0.0001).ConclusionsLymphadenectomy could improve long-term OS in women older than 50 years with grade 1 and 2 endometrioid EC.