Vaginal Cancer

It is the rarest gynecological cancer since it represents only 1% of gynecological cancers, but the vagina can be a place where metastases of tumors with another origin settle.

95% of these cancers occur in the skin cells of the vagina, making them squamous cell carcinomas. Much rarer are those of the glands of the vagina or.

It is a disease that occurs in elderly women, with a mean age at diagnosis of between 70 and 80 years. The most frequent symptom is bleeding in women over 80 years of age. painful intercourse, difficulty urinating, and a palpable pelvic mass are also symptoms of vaginal cancer.

Risk factor's

The risk factors are similar to those of:

• Advanced age
• Human papillomavirus infection
• Smokers
• Young age at first sexual intercourse
• High number of sexual partners
• Chronic vaginal irritation
• Exposure to dietiestilbestrol during fetal life

Diagnosis

Diagnosis should first be made with a examination of the vagina and pelvic organs. A biopsy of the suspicious area is performed and in case of having a positive result an extension study is carried out to know the degree of involvement of the disease. Therefore, involvement of the urinary bladder and rectum should be ruled out, in addition to other tests such as CT or MRI to complete the study.

Vaginal cancer phases

The stages of vaginal cancer are as follows:

• Stage 0 - earliest stage of vaginal cancer, also known as carcinoma in-situ, vaginal intraepithelial neoplasia (VAIN), because the cancer cells are in the vaginal skin and have not yet grown into the deeper tissues or have extended away from the vagina
• Stage 1 - the cancer has started to grow in the deeper tissues of the vagina but has not spread beyond the vagina
• Stage 2 - the cancer has started to spread outside the vagina into the surrounding tissues but has not reached the walls of the pelvis
• Stage 3 - the cancer has spread outside the vagina and has reached nearby lymph nodes or the side walls of the pelvis
• Stage 4 - advanced vaginal cancer, spreading to other organs of the body outside the vagina

Treatment

Treatment of vaginal cancer includes surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, which can be used alone or as combination therapy. The surgery will be more aggressive the more advanced the disease is. Radiation therapy can be done as external radiation or in the form of brachytherapy, using small tubes that are placed in the area to be treated and emit the radiation.