A small but tightly controlled study of patients with stage 1 cervical cancer has so far failed to reveal any significant difference between the results of radical hysterectomy and radiotherapy in treatment of the disease.
A preliminary report on the first eight years of the continuing study was made before members of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists by Michael Newton, MD, Bernard T. Hickman, MD, and Karl A. Bolton, MD, University of Mississippi, Jackson. Although the finding was negative, the authors thought it potentially significant in view of the long-standing controversy over the merits of the respective treatments for cervical cancer.
Up to the time the report was made, 91 patients had been treated on the University of Mississippi Hospital pelvic cancer service—43 by surgery and 48 by radiotherapy. Treatment has been continuously directed for eight years by the same team of gynecologists and radiologists. Unless examination and