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Fred Hutch Cancer Center offers comprehensive care for cervical cancer. We offer advanced therapies and new options available only through clinical trials. Cervical cancer can often be cured, especially when diagnosed early. It can even be prevented by finding and treating abnormal cells that may turn into cancer (precancer, or dysplasia).
The most common treatment for cervical cancer is surgery. This may be all the treatment you need, or you might have radiation therapy, chemotherapy or both. Some patients have targeted therapy or immunotherapy. But not everyone needs all of these. We’ll tailor your cervical cancer treatment to you.
Cervical Cancer Care Tailored to You
You and your family are our top priority. At Fred Hutch Cancer Center, we offer comprehensive and compassionate care — personalized to you. You'll have access to the latest treatment options, clinical trials and supportive care services.
Referrals are required for new patients. Please request your primary care provider or specialist fax all relevant medical information to the fax number listed below.
Phone: 206.598.8300
Fax: 206.598.3590
Cervical Cancer Surgery
Most people with cervical cancer begin treatment by having surgery to remove their cancer. There is a range of options — from removing only the cervix to taking out the whole uterus and other organs in the pelvis where cancer has spread or is likely to spread.
As a patient at Fred Hutch, you’ll have surgery by a UW Medicine gynecologic oncologist. Your surgeon will be specially trained and board certified in gynecologic oncology. They will recommend the best procedure to match your needs.
Learn about cervical cancer surgery.
Radiation Therapy for Cervical Cancer
Radiation therapy may be one of the main treatments you have for cervical cancer, along with surgery and sometimes chemotherapy or other medicines. There are two types of radiation therapy for cervical cancer:
- External-beam radiation therapy (EBRT): Aiming a high-energy beam at your tumor from a machine outside your body
- Brachytherapy: Putting radioactive material inside your vagina or uterus so it can kill nearby cancer cells
Learn about radiation therapy for cervical cancer.
Chemotherapy for Cervical Cancer
Chemotherapy helps to destroy cancer cells wherever they may be in your body. Usually, it means you get anti-cancer medicine through an intravenous (IV) line. Then the medicine travels throughout your body through your bloodstream.
How Chemotherapy Can Treat Cervical Cancer
Your care team may recommend chemotherapy:
- Along with radiation therapy to make the radiation therapy more effective (chemoradiation)
- After surgery and radiation therapy to slow or shrink any cancer that remains
- As your main treatment if the cancer has spread too widely to be treated with surgery or radiation
Chemotherapy Schedule
Chemotherapy schedules differ, based in part on which drugs you receive and if you are getting chemotherapy along with radiation therapy. Your care team will talk with you about how often you need to get chemotherapy and for how many weeks or months.
If you’re getting chemotherapy on its own, you may have treatment once every three or four weeks for three to six months. If you’re getting chemotherapy along with radiation therapy, you will probably have chemotherapy once a week for six weeks. You will receive radiation therapy daily, Monday to Friday, during that six weeks.
In general, people who have the same stage of cervical cancer often have the same or similar treatments. Your options may depend in part on if you want the option to become pregnant in the future. Common treatments by stage may include:
- Stage IA (1A): Surgery to remove the tumor and possibly pelvic lymph nodes. Sometimes surgeons only need to remove a small part of the cervix, like a cone-shaped piece of tissue. Sometimes they need to remove the whole uterus along with other organs (like the upper part of the vagina, one or both fallopian tubes, one or both ovaries, or nearby lymph nodes). Some people who want to become pregnant may have surgery to remove only the cervix (leaving the rest of the uterus), the upper part of the vagina, nearby tissue and possibly lymph nodes. Some people may have radiation therapy, chemotherapy or both.
- Stage IB (1B) and IIA (2A): Options include surgery (to remove the uterus, the upper part of the vagina, both fallopian tubes, both ovaries, nearby lymph nodes and other nearby tissue), radiation therapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Some people who want to become pregnant may have surgery to remove only the cervix (leaving the rest of the uterus), the upper part of the vagina, nearby tissue and possibly lymph nodes.
- Stage IIB (2B), III (3) and IVA (4A): Options include radiation therapy, chemotherapy, surgery to remove pelvic lymph nodes and immunotherapy.
- Stage IVB (4B): Options include immunotherapy, chemotherapy, targeted therapy and radiation therapy. Some people who cannot have radiation therapy might have surgery to remove organs from the pelvis where cancer has spread. This could include the uterus, cervix, vagina, ovaries, lower colon, rectum and bladder.
Fred Hutch offers all standard treatment for cervical cancer. Our patients also have access to newer options or treatment combinations that you can only get through clinical trials.
Fred Hutch researchers are always looking for better ways to treat cervical cancer. We are doing clinical trials of new treatments and combinations of treatments for cervical cancer that is advanced or has come back, including chemotherapies, targeted therapies and immunotherapies.
Learn more about cervical cancer research.
Your care team at Fred Hutch is here to help you prevent or prepare for side effects and to relieve any side effects you have. The most important step you can take is let your team know what you’re feeling. We’ve helped many patients and families through this process and know ways to ease your experience.
Often, there are medicines to help, like anti-nausea drugs. Based on the side effect, there may be a range of other helpful options too, like diet changes, physical therapy and emotional and practical support. Fred Hutch researchers continue to look for the best ways to keep side effects at bay.
Your team at Fred Hutch offers long-term follow-up care for as long as you choose after your treatment for cervical cancer. Our patients find it reassuring to see the same team members who treated them — experts in gynecologic cancers — for their follow-up visits. This includes physicians as well as advanced registered nurse practitioners.
Typically, people come for checkups, including pelvic exams, every three months for the first two years after treatment. Some patients choose to have all these follow-up visits at Fred Hutch. Some alternate between coming to Fred Hutch and seeing their local primary gynecologist.
After you reach the two-year mark without your disease coming back, you are less likely to have a recurrence. From that point, you can come in less often. We usually ask you to come in every six months for a checkup until you are five years out from your primary treatment. After five years, an annual checkup is all that we recommend.