Vulvar Cancer clinical trials and treatments

Firstly, I can't find any other vulvar cancer people here! Where are you ladies?
Here are some clinical trials to read about.

A study looking at testing sentinel lymph nodes, radiotherapy and chemotherapy for vulval cancer (GROINSS-VII)
This study is looking at whether it is safe to have radiotherapy instead of surgery when vulval cancer has spread to the sentinel lymph nodes.

The first treatment for vulval cancer is usually surgery. As well as removing the part of the vulva affected by cancer, the surgeon usually removes the lymph nodes from one or both groins. These lymph nodes are usually the first place where cancer cells can spread to. Removing them makes it less likely that the cancer will come back.

After surgery, women who have cancer cells in the lymph nodes may need to have additional treatment with radiotherapy. Sometimes you also have chemotherapy. Although combining surgery and radiotherapy may work well, it can cause side effects such as swelling in the legs (lymphoedema) and problems with wound healing.

In this study, researchers will find and test the lymph nodes nearest to the vulva. This is called sentinel node mapping. If there are no cancer cells in the sentinel node, you will not have any more treatment.

If there are cancer cells in the sentinel nodes, you well have radiotherapy. Some women taking part will also have chemotherapy. Doctors think that this will cause fewer side effects than the combination of surgery to remove all the lymph nodes followed by radiotherapy. But they need to find out if it is as good at stopping the cancer coming back.

The aims of the study are to

Learn more about sentinel node mapping
Find out if radiotherapy alone works as well as surgery (with or without radiotherapy) when the sentinel lymph nodes contain cancer cells
Learn more about the short term and long term side effects of vulval cancer treatment


Recruitment
Starts 01/10/2008
Ends 31/10/2010

Phase
Other

Who can enter this trial