2018 FIGO Staging System for Uterine Cervical Cancer: Enter Cross-sectional Imaging
Susanna I. Lee , Mostafa Atri
Author Affiliations
From the Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 55 Fruit St, White 270, Boston, MA 02114 (S.I.L.); and Department of Medical Imaging, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (M.A.).
Address correspondence to S.I.L. (e-mail: slee0@mgh.harvard.edu).
Published Online:May 28 2019https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.2019190088
Sections
Full text
PDF
Tools
Share
Abstract
With the 2018 International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics staging system for uterine cervical cancer, imaging is formally incorporated as a source of staging information and as a supplement to clinical examination (ie, pelvic examination, cystoscopy and colposcopy) to obtain an accurate description of tumor spread.

Imaging plays a central role in the 2018 International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics staging system for uterine cervical cancer. The revision calls for a more precise measurement of primary tumor size, best assessed with imaging. Evaluation for abdominopelvic retroperitoneal lymphadenopathy, either with imaging alone or with pathologic analysis, is now also part of staging. Choice of modality depends on the technology available within the practice setting. In high-resource settings, pelvic MRI (to assess tumor size and central pelvic spread) and torso fluorodeoxyglucose PET/CT (to assess lymphadenopathy and distant metastases) are used to assign stage and to plan therapy. In lower-resource settings, analogous modalities are pelvic US and chest radiography. Although imaging is already a part of pretreatment planning in some high-resource settings, its incorporation into assigning stage is a new development.

© RSNA, 2019