Impact of Obesity on Outcomes of Locally Aggressive Cervical Cancer Treated with Radiation Therapy

Document Type

Conference Proceeding - Restricted Access

Publication Date

5-8-2026

Abstract

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women, with an estimated 14,000 new cases in the US in 2025. Almost half of these are diagnosed as locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC), which has higher rates of recurrence and worse survival outcomes. Due to the advanced nature of their malignancy, treatment options are often limited to radiation therapy and platinum-based chemotherapy and surgery is contraindicated. While obesity is associated with higher rates of many types of cancer, there is a lack of studies examining the relationship between obesity and cervical cancer outcomes. Based on clinical experience, we hypothesize that patients with LACC that are obese have worse outcomes and decreased treatment response than non-obese patients.

From a retrospective search, we identified 520 female patients between 18 and 60 years of age at time of diagnosis that had LACC from 1/1/2014 to 12/31/2022. LACC was defined as stage 1B2 to IVA cancer. Patients lacking baseline characteristics such as body mass index or tumor histology were excluded from the study. Any patients that had a hysterectomy prior to treatment or lacked documented post-treatment follow-up were excluded. This left us with approximately 100 patients. Multiple demographic data points have been collected, including age at diagnosis, race, ethnicity, smoking status, height and weight, cancer grade, and cancer stage by FIGO 2018. We also collected time to completion of radiation therapy, use of cisplatin and brachytherapy, time to recurrence, progression free survival and current survival. Analysis is currently ongoing. We will compare demographics between each group. Survival analysis will be performed to compare progression free survival and overall survival.

At the current time, results are in process. Data collection had initially been limited by the difficulty accessing the dates of radiation and timing and type of brachytherapy, as well as the need to restage patients diagnosed between 2014 and 2018 to the most updated FIGO staging. We are currently in the process of analyzing the data with planned completion within the next month. We suspect that our research will demonstrate that those that are obese with LACC will have worse outcomes overall.

Despite validated screening, cervical cancer continues to affect more than 10, 000 American women each year. At this present time, results are pending. We as a research team suspect that we will see worse outcomes with earlier disease recurrence and reduced survivability in obese patients.

Comments

2026 Research Day Corewell Health West, Grand Rapids, MI, May 8, 2026. Abstract 2016

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