OBJECTIVES:

• Compare the effects of conventional surgery alone and conventional surgery plus lymphadenectomy in patients with endometrial cancer preoperatively thought to be confined to the uterine corpus.
• Determine the effect of postoperative adjuvant external beam radiotherapy on quality of life and survival of a subset of these patients at high risk of relapse and with no macroscopic disease after surgery.

OUTLINE: This is a randomized, multicenter study. Patients are randomized in both the surgery and radiotherapy segments of the study.

• Surgery: Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 surgery arms.

  • Arm I: Patients undergo conventional surgery (total abdominal hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy).
  • Arm II: Patients undergo conventional surgery as in arm I followed by lymphadenectomy with systematic dissection of the iliac and obturator nodes.

• Radiotherapy: Patients at high risk of relapse who have no postoperative macroscopic disease are randomized to 1 of 2 radiotherapy arms. (Patients may enter the radiotherapy randomization after surgery off study.)

  • Arm I: Patients receive in 20-25 fractions of external beam radiotherapy (total dose of 40-46 Gy) over 4-5 weeks.
  • Arm II: Patients receive no external beam radiotherapy. NOTE: Some patients receive vault brachytherapy regardless of radiotherapy randomization.

Quality of life is assessed before therapy and at 2 and 5 years after therapy.

Patients are followed every 3 months for 1 year and then every 6 months for 1 year.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A minimum of 1400 patients will be accrued for the surgical component of this study and at least 900 patients (including additional patients not participating in the surgical component of this study) will be accrued for the radiotherapy component of this study.