It effects thousands of women in America and tens of thousands world-wide. Treatment advances that increase survival will obviously have an impact on many women and their families. Bulky cervix cancers are certainly not unusual. Bulky describes the cancerous mass in size. Large or bulky Stage IB cervix cancer have worse local control and worse survival than other smaller Stage I cancers.
Local control means the cancer is contained in the area where it originated.
Similar stage means the patient has about the same extent of cancer. The staging system allows physicians and patients to compare results and treatments in a more orderly fashion. There has always been a big dispute on whether surgery should be used for these bulky cancers in an attempt to improve local control. In an attempt to determine the best method of treatment for women with bulky but localized, cancers researchers led by Keys et al, wrote a report published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine evaluating the best treatment for cervix cancer - like these. Women with cervix cancer of Stage IB were entered into this study.