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PURPOSE Locally advanced cervical cancer may present with uncontrollable vaginal bleeding in up to 70% of cases. Pelvic vessel embolization has been used as an urgent maneuver for achieving fast hemostatic control. This report describes outcomes of selective pelvic vessel embolization in patients with severe bleeding due to a locally advanced cervical cancer. METHODS In this retrospective study, technical aspects, clinical variables, and bleeding-related morbidity were described. The frequency of recurrent disease and the vital status at 1 year of follow-up were determined. Analysis was performed with statistical software R, version 3.6.2. The setting was Instituto Nacional de Cancerología- Bogotá, Colombia, between January 2009 and July 2017. RESULTS A total of 47 patients were included. Median age was 44 years (range, 26-70 years). The pre-embolization median hemoglobin level was 7.9 g/dL (range, 5.0-11.3 g/dL). Blood transfusions were administered to 41 women (87.2%). Bleeding control was achieved in 95.7% of cases in the first 24 hours after the embolization. There were no major complications. In 17 cases (36.2%), minor complications were reported; the most common was pelvic pain. In 17.1% of cases, a second embolization was required. After 12 months of follow-up, 27.7% of patients were alive without disease, 44.7% were alive with disease, and 25.5% of them have died of cervical cancer progression. CONCLUSION Selective pelvic vessel embolization is a useful alternative in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer and life-threatening bleeding. Its impact on recurrent disease and death due to oncologic cause is not clear.

PurposeMediastinal germ cell tumors (GCT) are rare neoplasms associated with poor survival prognosis. Due to their low incidence, limited information is available about this disease in South America. The objective of this study is to report the clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with mediastinal GCT in a cancer center in Colombia.Materials and MethodsWe conducted a retrospective analysis of patients with mediastinal GCT treated at the National Cancer Institute at Bogota (Colombia) between 2008 and 2020. Survival curves were presented using the Kaplan–Meier method. Chi-square and Cox proportional hazard model tests were used for data analysis.ResultsSixty-one patients were included in the study. Of them, 60 were male and 51 (83.6%) of whom had non-seminomatous germ cell tumors (NSGCT). Twenty-nine patients (47.5%) presented with superior vena cava syndrome, and 18 (29.5%) patients had extrapulmonary metastatic involvement. The three-year overall survival (OS) of NSGCT patients was 26%. The 3-year OS of NSGCT patients who underwent surgical resection of residual mediastinal mass after chemotherapy was 59%. Non-surgical management after first-line chemotherapy was associated with a worse survival prognosis in NSGCT patients (p = 0.002). Ten patients with mediastinal seminomatous germ cell tumors (SCGT) achieved a 3-year OS of 100%.ConclusionMediastinal NSGCT had poor outcomes. Surgery of the residual mass after first-line chemotherapy seems to improve the outcome of NSGCT patients. Advanced disease at presentation may reflect inadequate access to reference cancer centers in Colombia and potentially explain poor survival outcomes in this cohort. On the other hand, mediastinal SCGT is a biologically different disease; most patients will achieve disease remission and long-term survival with first-line chemotherapy.

The first video-assisted thoracic lobectomy in non-intubated patient in America was performed on 27 th of September 2014 in Bogotá Colombia, The National Cancer Institute in Bogotá received Dr. Diego González-Rivas to make possible this kind of procedure in a 53-year-old man, with a history of papillary thyroid cancer treated with surgery and Iodine therapy, in whom two pulmonary nodules were found in the monitoring tomography. We resected the nodule located at the right upper lobe previously marked by scintigraphy, the other one required a lobectomy because it was a deep nodule with malignant radiologic appearance inside of the middle lobe. The procedure discoursed in a non-intubated patient without technical difficulties or complications, very short recovery time, minimum pain and a quiet and usual postoperative evolution. This procedure, the first reported in America was replicated after others with similar results in several countries thanks to the collaboration between surgeons, anesthesiologists, radiologists, nurses and therapists, because especially in such interventions teamwork is essential. We believe that given the benefits in terms of recovery for the patient and anesthetic time, we could go on replicating the experience in selected patients.