Endometrial Cancer

the tumour size & how much deeply the cancer invades the muscle of uterus & imaging results, lymph nodes might not need to be removed.

SENTINEL LYMPH NODE MAPPING may be used in early stage endometrial cancer if imaging does not clearly show signs that cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. To do this, a blue or green dye is injected near cervix. The surgeon then looks for the lymph nodes that turn blue or green from the dye. These lymph nodes are the ones that the cancer would first drain into ( the sentinel node ).They are removed & tested to see if there are cancer cells in them ,if so, more lymph nodes are taken out because they are likely to have cancer cells in them, too. This is done at the same time as the surgery to remove the uterus (hysterectomy)

Surgery can be done through a large cut in abdomen (laparotomy) or through laparoscopic route, which has become more common.

Both simple & radical hysterectomy can be done through the laparoscopic route.

Laparoscopy is a technique in which surgeon uses a laparoscope to do the procedure. The surgeon makes 4 cuts in your abdomen. The laparoscope connects to a fibre optic camera which shows the picture of the inside of the body on a video screen. The surgeon then uses the other incisions to put the other instruments they use to do the surgery in the body. So you have 3 or 4 small wounds, each usually less than a centimetre long.

It is associated with less postoperative pain & early recovery after surgery.

Laparoscopic surgery for endometrial cancer seems to be just as good as more traditional open procedure if done by a surgeon who has a lot of experience in laparoscopic cancer surgeries.

A Robotic approach or da Vinci surgery is increasingly being used to do laparoscopic procedures & outcomes are much the same.

In robotic surgery, the surgeon sits at a control panel in the operating room & moves the robotic arms to operate through small incisions.