Relationship of adherence to cervical cancer treatment guideline towards patients’ five-year survival: Systematic review of follow-up trials

Cervical cancer is the one of the most common gynecology malignancies in the world. National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines on cervical cancer are widely adopted as national guidelines and clinical practice guidelines. These guidelines are constantly being updated but their effectiveness has not been questioned. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review to assess outcomes with/without guideline adherence in the published studies. This systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA statement. Searching with strategy on PubMed, ProQuest, Scopus, and Wiley databases resulted in three studies that met all criteria, thus assessed further with Newcastle-Ottawa scale, and assessed qualitatively. All three studies adopt NCCN guidelines. We found that the proportion of adherence to cervical cancer treatment guidelines was low, ranging from 42% to 54%, with violations occurring at various clinical stages. One study stated that early stage cervical cancer was more likely to receive guideline adherence (adjusted OR=5.48; 95%CI: 1.94–15.5; p=0.001) than advanced stage. There was a higher five-year survival of cervical cancer patients in the guideline-adhering group than in the nonadhering group. In all three studies, survival in the adherent group was reported as big as 88%, 79%, and 93%, respectively, compared to nonadherent group with 56%, 78%, and 88.1%respectively (p<0.05). One study stated that adherence to guidelines could reduce cervical cancer mortality on stage I and II by 0.22 times (p<0.05). As the conclusion, adherence to guidelines increases survival rates. In the early stages, there are differences in survival.