Introduction
Cervical cancer is a common gynecological malignant tumor and is the fourth most prevalent cancer in women.[1]Statistically, approximately 570,000 cases of cervical cancer and 311,000 related deaths were reported in 2018[2]. Neuroendocrine carcinoma of the cervix (NECC) is a rare type of cervix cancer. It has a bad prognosis and acts more aggressively than other prevalent types, despite constituting only 1–1.5% of all cervical cancer cases.[3] The five-year survival rate of patients with NECC is only 0–30%.[4]
Research on NECC is scarce, particularly in terms of prognosis owing to its low prevalence. Previous studies indicated that the FIGO stages may serve to determine the prognosis of the survival and the adjuvant chemotherapy following radical surgery was the preferred treatment option for Korean women with early-stage NECC.[5]In another study, surgery and lymphadenectomy appeared to have a substantial impact on the survival of patients with NECC when compared to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.[6] However, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recommends etoposide plus cisplatin as the optimal treatment option for cervical cancer.[7] Furthermore, paclitaxel plus cisplatin may be a more efficient treatment modality than etoposide plus cisplatin.[8] No consensus has been established on the prognostic factors and treatment of NECC, and to date, scarcely study has shown the relationship between pathological results and prognosis. We conducted a multi-center retrospective study to analyze the relationship between pathological results and survival outcomes and explore the prognostic factors and research for better treatment of the disease by analyzing the clinicopathological data and therapeutic strategies of patients with NECC.