Overview of Gynaecological Cancers

Fertility-sparing treatment is done only if the lady desires fertility, the disease is early, confined to one single ovary, with no peritoneal deposits and no malignant cells in the ascites. Even at stage 1B we'd do a diagnostic laparoscopy to check the other ovary, because imaging might miss small deposits. For germ cell tumours we always do fertility-sparing surgery because they're highly chemosensitive; for other tumours the decision has to be tailor-made.

If it's an advanced stage, stage 3 or 4, treatment is usually chemotherapy with radiation therapy. Squamous cell carcinomas are radiosensitive, and chemotherapy is given as a radiosensitiser to get a better response. If there's stage 4 disease with distant metastasis, systemic therapy is needed. Even after this, if there's residual disease and the patient's performance status is good, we'd still go back and remove the residual disease.

We use ICG dye and do the procedure robotically or laparoscopically with a 4K camera using the Firefly technique. We always open the retroperitoneal spaces first and get everything ready before injecting, because if there's bleeding during dissection after injecting, you won't be able to locate the sentinel node properly. If you're implementing this for the first time, do a pilot study of at least 25 cases each for endometrial and cervical cancer before using it as your standard method.

The most common complication is urinary issues, in about one or two out of every hundred patients we operate on, because we try carefully to identify and spare the inferior hypogastric nerve. Unlike axillary lymph node dissection, we don't see lymphoedema with the same frequency after pelvic lymph node dissection. We also follow the ERAS protocol, enhanced recovery after surgery, ambulating the patient the same day and starting oral intake within hours.

PCOS is a lifestyle disease. If you correct the lifestyle, your hormones should be under control. We explain to patients what's causing the imbalance rather than putting them on hormonal pills upfront, and give them 3 to 4 months to work on diet, exercise, stress management and sleep, alongside antioxidant medications. 60 to 70 percent of our patients come back at the end of 3 months saying they're having regular cycles.

The series covers cervical cancer, endometrial and uterine cancer, tubo-ovarian and primary peritoneal carcinoma, and vulvar cancer, along with the diagnostic and treatment decisions that separate each of them.

Cervical cancer, because it's caused 99 percent of the time by persistent infection with oncogenic HPV, a preventable cause rather than an inherited or purely lifestyle-driven one, so it can in principle be eliminated through vaccination and screening alone.

Endometrial cancer. Its incidence has doubled in the last two decades and is projected to rise another 50 percent by 2044, driven largely by obesity, diabetes, and lifestyle rather than genetics.

Because its early symptoms, bloating, gastritis, early satiety, are easy to dismiss, and 75 percent of cases present at an advanced stage.

Patients, usually well into their sixties or eighties, are often too embarrassed to report persistent itching or bleeding to anyone, including their own family.