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Cervical Cancer Treatments
Treatment for cervical cancer can cure or control the disease. It can also improve your quality of life by minimizing symptoms. Treatment varies greatly depending on:
- The stage of the cancer
- Whether it’s growing slowly or aggressively
- Your personal preferences and goals
What We Offer For Cervical Cancer
- Nationally recognized expertise to treat every stage and type of cervical cancer.
- Precise diagnostic tests, including advanced biopsy and imaging technologies to evaluate the unique biology of cervical cancer.
- Team-based treatment planning, including weekly meetings that bring together specialists from diverse disciplines to tailor care to your needs.
- Advanced treatment options, including fertility-sparing procedures and intraoperative radiation therapy.
- Tumor genomic profiling services to target the genetic fingerprint of hard-to-treat cervical cancers with therapies available only through clinical trials.
- Wide-ranging compassionate support services, including dedicated care coordination, nutrition services, pain management, and palliative care.
Connect to Care
Let us help find personalized care options for you and your family.
Interested in an Online Second Opinion?
The Stanford Medicine Online Second Opinion program offers you easy access to our world-class doctors. It’s all done remotely, and you don’t have to visit our hospital or one of our clinics for this service. You don’t even need to leave home!
Visit our online second opinion page to learn more.
We work carefully to determine the best treatment options for you and to prepare a treatment plan personalized to your needs. We try to maximize treatment success while minimizing the impact that diagnosis and treatment can have on your life.
Different cervical cancer treatments have different goals, such as:
- Slowing or stopping the growth of cancer
- Destroying cancer cells in the cervix
- Destroying any cancer cells that may have spread (metastasized) outside the cervix
- Delaying or preventing cervical cancer from coming back (recurrence)
- Managing symptoms of incurable cancer
The team evaluates different options for your treatment plan, based on the details of your diagnosis, including:
- Stage of cervical cancer
- Whether it has metastasized to your lymph nodes or other parts of your body
- Type of cervical cancer you have (squamous cell carcinoma or adenocarcinoma)
- Your age and overall health
- Whether you have had cancer before
We will discuss different types of treatment and how to combine them in a sequence that will best treat the cancer:
Treatment for stage 1 cervical cancer
When cervical cancer is limited to a small area of the cervix, surgery to remove the cancer alone can be sufficient. Sometimes, you may need a hysterectomy. In some cases, radiation follows surgery. Your treatment planning team will discuss whether chemotherapy and radiation therapy are treatment options for you.
Treatment for stage 2 to stage 4 cervical cancer
When cancer has spread from the cervix to the upper vagina, your treatment planning team will discuss whether you need surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy.
Surgery is a common treatment for cervical cancer. It can range from removing a small section of the cervix to a bigger operation that removes the uterus, the tissues beside the uterus, and other parts of the reproductive tract. Surgery for cervical cancer is different for every patient. Your cancer surgeon (surgical oncologist) will work with you to determine the least invasive and most effective surgery for the type of cervical cancer you have.
Our doctors use minimally invasive procedures to remove tumors and minimize reoccurrence. Stanford Health Care is one of the few centers in the U.S. to offer fertility-conserving treatments. Surgical treatments include:
- Loop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP): We remove abnormal tissue using an electric wire loop.
- Laser surgery and laser therapy: We burn off cancer cells using a laser beam.
- Sentinel lymph node biopsy: We remove your sentinel lymph node. This is the first lymph node where cancer cells may spread.
- Trachelectomy: We remove your cervix, but not your uterus or ovaries.
- Hysterectomy: We remove your entire uterus and cervix, as well as your surrounding body tissues.
To achieve the best possible outcome, your care team may recommend combining surgery with other treatments, such as radiation therapy or chemotherapy. These additional treatments can be given one of two ways:
- Neoadjuvant therapy: This treatment occurs before surgery to make it easier and more effective. Undergoing chemotherapy before surgery may shrink a tumor and make cancer removal more successful.
- Adjuvant therapy: This treatment occurs after surgery to reduce the risk of the cancer coming back. Chemotherapy or radiation therapy after surgery can destroy remaining cancer cells.
Cancer medications treat your entire body with cancer-fighting medicine to shrink tumors and destroy cancer cells. These medications can be taken as an injection or in pill form.
We use several types of cancer medication, including:
- Chemotherapy is a group of powerful medications that stop or slow the growth of cancer cells. There are many types of chemotherapy that each work in unique ways to attack cancer. Our doctors sometimes suggest chemotherapy along with radiation therapy.
- Hormone therapy blocks the production of specific hormones that fuel cervical cancer. These medications help stop or slow the growth of cancer cells. Hormone therapy is a treatment option for many cervical cancers.
- Immunotherapy stimulates your immune system to attack cancer cells.
Radiation therapy is a painless treatment that uses high-energy X-rays or other types of radiation to destroy cancer cells. Our radiation oncologists have years of experience safely and effectively treating cervical cancer with radiation. Using the latest technology, we can precisely target tumors and minimize damage to nearby healthy tissue.
If radiation therapy is an effective treatment for the type of cervical cancer you have, your doctor will speak with you about the best options.
External radiation uses a machine called a linear accelerator (LINAC) to deliver radiation to the area where the cancer cells are found. Some of the types of external radiation we use include:
- 3D (3-dimensional) conformal radiation therapy (3D-CRT), where your doctor uses 3D images created with a CT or MRI machine to better target the tumor
- Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), allows your doctor to adjust the amount of radiation you get from each beam, based on the tumor
- Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR/SBRT), which is a strong type of radiation given in five or fewer treatments (also called stereotactic body radiation therapy)
Internal radiation (brachytherapy) puts small amounts of radioactive material into the area where the cancer was found or removed. At Stanford Health Care, we perform high-dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy. The radioactive material is implanted for only 10 to 20 minutes at a time, then removed. You are not radioactive at any time other than the few minutes of treatment, meaning you can safely be around others when you return home. There are typically three to six treatments total, given once a day, twice a week. Most of the time, treatments are outpatient and you can go home the same day.
Sometimes, brachytherapy is offered in combination with external beam therapy. Your doctor will determine the exact amount and combination of treatments to best treat the type of cancer you have.
After you complete your cervical cancer treatment, your care team works with you to develop an ongoing care plan. Regular follow-up care, also known as surveillance, is important to:
- Monitor your overall health
- Manage any side effects
- Check for possible signs of the cancer coming back (recurring)
We work closely with your primary care doctor throughout your treatment, providing updates on a regular basis. We continue this partnership after you finish treatment to coordinate your ongoing care and to address any other health concerns.
Clinical Trials
Clinical Trials
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Open Clinical Trials
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Clinical trials are research studies that evaluate a new medical approach, device, drug, or other treatment. As a Stanford Health Care patient, you may have access to the latest advanced clinical trials.
Open trials refer to studies that are currently recruiting participants or that may recruit participants soon. Closed trials are not currently enrolling additional patients.