Study results from University of Florence update understanding of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia.

In this recent report published in the journal Anticancer Research, researchers in Florence, Italy conducted a study "To investigate the therapeutic efficacy of cylindrical or cone-shaped excision performed by laser CO2 in the conservative management of persistent-recurrent high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (HG-CIN) in women of fertile age. Ninety-four premenopausal patients with persistent-recurrent HG-CIN had undergone re-conization or cylindrical excision according to the time of reappearance of the disease."

"The length of the procedures, intra- and postoperative complications, height of the excised specimens, final histological findings and follow-up data were retrospectively evaluated. Fifty-five (58.5%) persistent and 39 (41.5%) recurrent cases had undergone cylindrical excision and standard re-conization respectively. All the treatments were successfully performed in an out-patient setting under local anesthesia with no differences in term of operative time, height of removed specimens, intra- and postoperative complications between the two groups. Definitive histology confirmed HG-CIN in 95.7% of the cases and FIGO Stage IaI cervical cancer (negative lymph vascular space involvement, LVSI) in 4.3% of the cases. The endocervical margins were involved in 3.6% of the cylindrical (persistent) and in 17.9% of the cone-shaped (recurrent) specimens (p=0.03). The overall cure rate after a median follow-up time of 54 months (range 10-196) was 91.5%. A third excisional procedure was performed in 8 cases of persistent-recurrent HG-CIN with a ...