Objective: Determine the incidence of hypercalcemia in gynecologic malignancy patients and their survival outcome.
Design: Single-institution retrospective clinical study.
Patients and methods: We used Fisher exact test, Kaplan-Meier survival curves, and Cox proportional hazards model to analyze demographic and clinical data from gynecologic malignancy patients with hypercalcemia who had been treated at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center from September 1997 to August 2006.
Results: Of the 5260 gynecologic malignancy patients, 268 had hypercalcemia (5%). Of the 268, 12 were excluded because of hyperparathyroidism or coexisting malignancies; thus, 256 patients were included in the study. Most patients (82%) had mild hypercalcemia. Severity of hypercalcemia was associated with disease stage (P = 0.0019), use of hypercalcemia treatment (P < 0.0001), and survival duration (P < 0.0001). The median survival duration of patients who had not been treated for hypercalcemia was 432 days compared with 106 days in patients who had been treated. The shorter survival duration of treated patients seems to result from their disease status and hypercalcemia severity rather than whether they were treated for hypercalcemia.
Conclusions: Moderate and severe hypercalcemia is associated with poorer survival duration in gynecologic malignancy patients. Early detection and treatment of hypercalcemia in these patients may prolong survival. To our knowledge, this is the first study of hypercalcemia in patients with general gynecologic malignancy.