Vulvar cancer in Tunisia: Epidemiological and clinicopathological features multicentric study

Objective to describe for the first time the epidemiologic and clinico-pathologic characteristics of vulvar cancer in tunisia. design two parts are distinguished in this study: part1: multicentric retrospective study about the characteristics of all cancer cases diagnosed during a 17-years period (january 1998–december 2014) in three departments of gynecology and obstetrics: one in south tunisia and two in the capital. part 2: to determine the incidence trend of invasive vulvar cancer in north tunisia 1994–2009,on the basis of north cancer registry of tunisia. results a total of 76 cases of vulvar cancer were recorded. the median age at diagnosis was 65.4 years and 86.9% of patients were more than 55 years old. the symptomatology was dominated by vulvar pruritus in 48.7%. the average size of the tumor was 3.96 cm. stage iii was the most frequent (53.7%) followed by stage ii (28.3%). only 10.4% of tumors were at stage i. the most common histologic type of vulvar malignancy was squamous cell carcinoma (scc) (94.7%). standardized incidence varied from 1.2/100 000 (1994) to 0.5/100 000 (2009). there was significant decrease of standardized incidence (apc of −8.8% per year,95% ci: −5.5%,−9.0%–p < 0.001). conclusion vulvar cancer in tunisia is a rare disease,occurs mostly in elderly women,and is diagnosed at advanced stages. our findings emphasize that a greater effort should be made to facilitate early diagnosis,as treatment in earlier stages is less extensive and potentially curative. © 2017 national cancer institute,cairo university