Etude épidémiologique du cancer du col de l’utérus dans la région d’EL Oued

Abstract

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer affecting women in Algeria, and therefore represents a serious public health problem. Given the importance of this health problem, and in order to contribute to a better understanding of certain aspects of the etiology of cervical cancer in Algeria, we carried out a retrospective epidemiological study of 117 patients with cervical cancer treated at the Oncology-Radiotherapy Department of the EL-Oued Cancer Center (CLCC) between 2021 and 2023.

This study aims to describe the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of patients (such as patient age, parity, age at first marriage, hormonal status, clinical symptoms, histological type of cancer and their stages). The results showed that the median age was 56, with a low proportion of young women under 40. Our results also confirm the influence of several risk factors, such as early marriage (under 18: 47%), multiparity (60.68%) and menopause (81%). Histological studies showed a clear predominance of squamous cell carcinomas (89%) over adenocarcinomas (11%). The most frequent stages at diagnosis were stage IIB (39.31%), followed by stage IIIc (22.22%). Lack of preventive screening is thought to be the main cause. More than half of Algerian women discover their cancer too late, at an advanced stage of the disease, when the cancer has already spread throughout the genital tract or beyond. Hence the need to raise awareness of prevention and early diagnosis.