If you have cervical cancer, deciding what treatment is best for you can be difficult. Treating cervical cancer require you to make difficult decisions about the treatment options, However, your cervical cancer team will make recommendations, but the final decision will still be yours.

Before going to hospital to discuss your cervical cancer treatment options, you may find it useful to write a list of questions to ask the specialist. For example, you may want to find out what the advantages and disadvantages of particular treatments are.

Staging

Health professionals use a staging system to describe how far cervical cancer has spread.

1. Stage 0. This is very early cervical cancer (sometimes called carcinoma in situ) found only in the surface layer of the cervix. It may be treated with a cone biopsy (see box, bottom left).
2. Stage 1. The cervical cancer is only in the neck of the womb. It is generally treated with surgery or radiotherapy.
3. Stage 2. The cervical cancer has begun to spread outside the neck of the womb and into the surrounding areas, such as the vagina. It is usually treated with surgery or radiotherapy, or both.
4. Stage 3. The cervical cancer has spread into the pelvic area. It is usually treated with radiotherapy and chemotherapy (called chemoradiation).
5. Stage 4 (advanced cervical cancer). The cervical cancer has spread to other organs, such as your bladder, rectum or even your lungs. It is treated with surgery and chemoradiation.

Your doctor will be able to advise you on the best treatment plan for you, depending on factors such as your age, general health, the type and size of tumour, and whether it has spread beyond the cervix.

Surgery

Surgery usually means having a hysterectomy, which is the removal of your womb and cervix.

However, if you have early-stage cervical cancer, it may be possible to leave enough of your cervix behind so that you may be able to become pregnant afterwards. This is called a trachelectomy.

If your cervical cancer is advanced, you may need to have other organs removed, such as your vagina and lymph nodes, as well as your womb and cervix.

If surgery does not remove all the cervical cancer cells, or if cancer cells were found in your nearby lymph nodes, your doctor may recommend a course of radiotherapy to follow.

Radiotherapy

Treating cervical cancer with radiotherapy may be used after surgery if there is a risk that some cervical cancer cells may be left behind, or to reduce the risk of cancerous cells returning.

If cervical cancer has spread beyond the cervix and cannot be treated using surgery, radiotherapy is usually used instead and may be given in combination with chemotherapy (see below). It can also help patients whose cervical cancer cannot be cured by relieving symptoms and prolonging a good quality of life.

Radiotherapy uses radiation to kill cervical cancer cells.

1. If it is given internally, a small radioactive metal object is placed inside your vagina and left for a few hours or days.
2. If it is given externally, it is given from outside the body using a machine that directs high energy X-rays at the cancer. You have a few minutes of radiotherapy daily, five days a week for several weeks.

While it kills cancerous cells, radiotherapy can also affect healthy tissue and has a number of side effects, including:

1. sore, red skin (like sunburn),
2. pain while passing urine,
3. diarrhoea,
4. tiredness, and
5. nausea.

If you have external radiotherapy to the pelvis, you may experience an early menopause (if you have not had the menopause already). This means you will no longer be able to have children.

Chemoradiation

Chemotherapy taken alongside radiotherapy, called chemoradiation, improves overall survival rates by lowering the risk of the cancer coming back. Chemotherapy is the use of anti-cancer drugs to destroy cancer cells. It is usually given by injection (called intravenous chemotherapy).

Like radiotherapy, the powerful medicines used in chemotherapy can also damage healthy tissue and cause a range of side effects. Side effects include:

• nausea,
• vomiting,
• hair loss, and
• fatigue.

Chemotherapy can also weaken your immune system, making you more vulnerable to infection. However, the side effects should stop once treatment has finished.

Clinical trials

As cervical cancer is relatively rare, you may be asked to take part in a clinical trial. Clinical trials are an important way for health professionals to learn more about the best way to treat specific conditions.

Most clinical trials involve comparing a new treatment with an existing treatment to determine whether the new treatment is more or less effective.

If you do receive a new treatment, there is no guarantee that it will be more effective than an existing one.

Your care team can tell you if there are clinical trials in your area, and explain the advantages and disadvantages of taking part.

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2. Proven ways to pre­vent­ing cer­vical can­cer
3. New guidelines for cer­vical can­cer smear test
4. Breast Can­cer in Women
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6. Can con­tra­cept­ives lower ovarian can­cer risk?
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8. Bowel Can­cer
9. Can­cer of the blad­der
10. Veget­ables and tea reduce colon and rectal can­cer risk!

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