Background: Current prognostic models lack the use of pre-operative CT images to predict recurrence in endometrial cancer (EC) patients. Our study aimed to investigate the potential of radiomic features extracted from pre-surgical CT scans to accurately predict disease-free survival (DFS) among EC patients. Methods: Contrast-Enhanced CT (CE-CT) scans from 81 EC cases were used to extract the radiomic features from semi-automatically contoured volumes of interest. We employed a 10-fold cross-validation approach with a 6:4 training to test set and utilized data augmentation and balancing techniques. Univariate analysis was applied for feature reduction leading to the development of three distinct machine learning (ML) models for the prediction of DFS: LASSO-Cox, CoxBoost and Random Forest (RFsrc). Results: In the training set, the ML models demonstrated AUCs ranging from 0.92 to 0.93, sensitivities from 0.96 to 1.00 and specificities from 0.77 to 0.89. In the test set, AUCs ranged from 0.86 to 0.90, sensitivities from 0.89 to 1.00 and specificities from 0.73 to 0.90. Patients classified as having a high recurrence risk prediction by ML models exhibited significantly worse DSF (p-value < 0.001) across all models. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate the potential of radiomics in predicting EC recurrence. While further validation studies are needed, our results underscore the promising role of radiomics in forecasting EC outcomes.
Objective. To compare the survival outcomes of primary debulking surgery and platinum-based adjuvant chemotherapy versus interval debulking surgery after platinum-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with stage IVb endometrial cancer and peritoneal carcinosis. Methods. The online search included the following data sources: PubMed, Scopus, WOS, and the Cochrane Library from 1990 to 2024 (PROSPERO registration code: CRD42023438602). A total of 3230 studies were identified, with the inclusion of 16. Individual patient data on survival outcomes, disease distribution, and residual tumors, as well as details of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and adjuvant treatment, were extracted. Results. A total of 285 patients were included: 197 (69%) underwent primary debulking surgery and 88 (31%) underwent interval debulking surgery. The pooled analysis revealed a median progression-free survival in the primary debulking surgery group of 18.0 months compared to 12.0 months in the interval debulking surgery group (p = 0.028; log-rank test), and a median overall survival of 30.92 months versus 28.73 months (p = 0.400; log-rank test). Among the 134 patients with available information on the residual tumor after primary debulking surgery or interval debulking surgery, 110 (82%) had no macroscopic residual tumor (residual tumor = 0). The median progression-free survival was 18.9 months in the residual tumor = 0 group compared to 6.19 months in the residual tumor > 0 group (p < 0.001; log-rank test); the median overall survival was 40.6 months versus 21 months (p = 0.028; log-rank test). Conclusions. These results indicate that primary debulking surgery should be considered the preferred treatment approach for advanced endometrial cancer with carcinosis, especially in carefully selected patients where complete cytoreduction is achievable. Further prospective studies are warranted to confirm these results and to establish standardized criteria for patient selection, incorporating molecular-integrated risk profiles for endometrial cancer.