Radiation Therapy With or Without Cisplatin in Treating Patients With Recurrent Endometrial Cancer

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES: I. To assess whether pelvic radiation therapy with concurrent cisplatin is more promising with respect to progression-free survival than pelvic radiation therapy alone in the treatment of recurrent uterine carcinoma limited to the pelvis and vagina. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: I. To capture the sites of recurrence subsequent to treatment with pelvic radiation with or without concurrent weekly cisplatin in women with recurrent uterine carcinoma. II. To estimate overall survival of patients with recurrent uterine carcinoma treated with pelvic radiation therapy with or without concurrent weekly cisplatin. III. To estimate the prognostic significance of the location (central pelvis versus vagina) and size of the recurrence, in addition to the prognostic significance in the salvage setting of the histological subtype, grade, patient age, race, performance status, and the presence of lymph-vascular space involvement of the original tumor at the time of initial hysterectomy. IV. To evaluate toxicity derived from the combined cisplatin and radiation compared with radiation alone in this patient population. OUTLINE: Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 arms. ARM I: Patients undergo external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT) to the pelvis daily on days 1-5 for 5 weeks. After completion of EBRT, patients undergo intracavitary low-dose rate or high-dose rate brachytherapy\* or low-dose rate interstitial brachytherapy\*. ARM II: Patients undergo EBRT as in Arm I and receive cisplatin intravenously (IV) over 1-2 hours on days 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29. Patients then undergo brachytherapy\* as in Arm I. NOTE: \*IMRT boost is allowed for patients who are not candidates for brachytherapy. IMRT may also be used for the entire course of therapy for the treatment of the whole pelvis and/or the boost in patients not undergoing brachytherapy. In both arms, treatment continues in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. After completion of study treatment, patients are followed up every month for 3 months, 3 months for 2 years and then every 6 months for 3 years.