Laura Burney Ellis

Background/Objectives: The levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine device (LNG-IUD) is widely used as a long-acting reversible contraceptive and as a therapeutic option for heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis, adenomyosis, and endometrial hyperplasia. Although its predominant effect is local, systemic levonorgestrel exposure has raised questions regarding its potential influence on cancer risk. This review aims to summarise and critically appraise the available evidence on the association between LNG-IUD use and gynaecologic, breast, and selected non-gynaecologic malignancies (including colorectal, lung, pancreatic, gastric, thyroid, skin [melanoma], and haematological cancers). Methods: A structured narrative review was developed by a multidisciplinary expert group affiliated with the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) and the European Society for Gynaecological Endoscopy (ESGE). PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, and Scopus were searched in December 2024 without publication-date restrictions. We critically appraised epidemiological and clinical evidence on LNG-IUD use and breast, endometrial, ovarian, cervical, and selected non-gynaecologic cancer risks, prioritising population-based cohorts, registry-based studies, case–control studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. Results: The strongest and most consistent evidence supports a substantial reduction in endometrial cancer risk among LNG-IUD users, with a possible protective association also suggested for ovarian cancer. Available data do not indicate a clear increase in cervical cancer, CIN3+, or invasive cervical disease. In contrast, evidence for breast cancer remains heterogeneous, with some registry-based studies suggesting a modest relative increase and other cohort or case–control studies showing no significant association. Evidence regarding non-gynaecologic cancers remains limited and inconclusive. Conclusions: Overall, current evidence suggests that the LNG-IUD has a favourable oncological safety profile, with the strongest evidence supporting a significant reduction in endometrial cancer risk and a potential protective effect against ovarian cancer. There is no evidence pointing to increased risk of cervical cancer. However, results related to breast cancer are mixed, and a slight risk increase cannot be ruled out; thus, counselling should be personalised based on the indication, menopausal status, duration of use, and individual breast cancer risk.

Background/Objectives: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted virus worldwide and is frequently detected in women of reproductive age. In this population, HPV-related diseases and their management may affect reproductive health and pregnancy outcomes. This narrative review summarizes the current evidence on HPV infection and HPV-related diseases in relation to fertility, pregnancy, and neonatal outcomes, and discusses preventive strategies, with a particular focus on HPV vaccination. Methods: An international, multidisciplinary team of clinicians from the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) Prevention Committee reviewed the literature on HPV, HPV-related diseases, HPV vaccination, and reproductive outcomes, without time restrictions, prioritizing studies judged to meaningfully reflect the available evidence. Results: The most consistent evidence linking HPV-related conditions to adverse pregnancy outcomes relates to the treatment of cervical precancer, particularly excisional procedures, which are associated with an increased risk of preterm birth and mid-trimester pregnancy loss. In contrast, evidence that maternal HPV detection alone causes adverse pregnancy or neonatal outcomes remains limited and inconsistent. Data on HPV infection and subfertility are scarce and heterogeneous. Management of HPV-related lesions during pregnancy remains challenging and requires careful balancing of maternal safety with avoidance of unnecessary interventions. HPV DNA has been detected in neonatal samples, but convincing evidence for clinically relevant vertical transmission is lacking. Available data indicate that inadvertent HPV vaccination shortly before or during pregnancy is not associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. Conclusions: Current evidence suggests that reproductive risks are more strongly associated with the treatment of HPV-related diseases than with HPV infection itself. Preventive strategies—especially HPV vaccination—remain central to reducing HPV-related disease burden. Although HPV vaccines are not routinely recommended during pregnancy, evidence supports the safety of inadvertent exposure around conception or during gestation, while potential long-term benefits of vaccination regarding reproductive health require further study.

Background/Objectives: Persistent human papillomavirus (HPV) infection can lead to malignancies of the cervix, vulva, vagina, penis, anus, and oropharynx. The increasing incidence of HPV-related head and neck cancers has raised concerns regarding potential occupational exposure and transmission risks among healthcare workers. This study aimed to systematically evaluate the evidence on occupational HPV transmission in healthcare settings. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted using three electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) from inception to August 2025, following PRISMA 2020 guidelines. A total of 34 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Expert opinions and practical recommendations from members of the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) Prevention Committee were included to support interpretation of the results. Results: The available literature on occupational HPV transmission was limited, with a paucity of high-quality studies. Nevertheless, existing data suggest a potential occupational risk, particularly during aerosol or smoke-generating procedures performed for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia or cervical cancer. Several studies reported the detection of HPV DNA in surgical smoke or on instruments used during such procedures, indicating possible exposure among healthcare workers. Conclusions: Although current evidence is insufficient to definitively classify HPV infection as an occupational disease, available data indicate a potential exposure risk for healthcare workers involved in HPV-related procedures. Preventive measures, like personal protective equipment, should be emphasized. HPV vaccination has been recommended by some professional societies for healthcare workers performing gynecological procedures, though further research is needed to evaluate vaccine efficacy beyond the standard age range and its cost-effectiveness in this context.

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) aims to eliminate cervical cancer by 2030 through a global strategy, centred on high-risk Human papillomavirus (hrHPV)-based screening and treatment. Implementing these strategies in low-resource settings remains challenging, due to barriers associated with limited healthcare infrastructure and patient awareness. Self-sampling for hrHPV has shown higher acceptability and similar diagnostic accuracy compared to clinician-taken samples. This study proposes a protocol to evaluate the clinical efficacy of a cervical cancer screening program utilising hrHPV self-sampling in Ghana. Methods and Analysis: 1000 non-pregnant women aged 30-65 years will be invited to self-collect hrHPV samples. Those testing hrHPV positive will undergo visual inspection with acetic acid. Those diagnosed with high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions will be offered ablation. In any case where there is a suspicion of invasion, or equivocal diagnosis, biopsies will be taken. Follow-up for women who are test positive for hrHPV and/or undergo treatment, will involve hrHPV self-sampling after 6 months. HrHPV-negative women will rescreen after 3 years. Biopsies will be taken where immediate treatment is not suitable, and women with confirmed or suspected invasive cervical carcinoma will be referred for surgical and/or oncological care. The primary outcome will be the proportion of women successfully screened, defined as the proportion of women with a valid HPV test result out of those invited to attend cervical screening. Secondary outcomes include screening uptake, disease detection rate, hrHPV genotype prevalence, treatment acceptance rate, successful treatment response, missed disease during treatment, number lost to follow-up, and disease recurrence. Discussion: In low-resource settings, hrHPV self-sampling offers an accessible method to increase screening uptake. This study will inform strategies for broader implementation of cervical cancer screening and contribute to achieving the WHO’s goal of elimination by 2030. Trial Registration: Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Kintampo Health Research Centre Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC), Bono East, Ghana, West Africa, on 24 May 2024 (IEC IRB Registration No. 0004854; Study ID: KHRCIEC/2024-03).

Introduction: The surgical consent process is a crucial discussion between patient and surgeon, which is predominantly documented utilizing hand-written forms. The exchange of individualized information allows the patient to make a truly informed decision. Digital consent (also known as electronic consent or e-consent) has been shown to improve accuracy of information provided without increasing the time taken to consent patients. We aimed to evaluate patient experience and effectiveness of digital consent in a gynecology department in a tertiary London Teaching Hospital. Methods: A questionnaire was designed and completed by 100 patients undergoing gynecological surgery: 50 consented using paper and 50 consented digitally. The questionnaire included 8 statements, with five possible answers to select, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree, on a standard five-point Likert Scale. Patients were all female and categorized into age groups (deciles) and asked whether consent was taken digitally or on paper. Data were collected between January and July 2021. Results: Most responses were positive with 87% (694/800) of responses to the questions being either strongly agree or agree. Patients who were consented using paper selected ‘strongly agree’ 43.5% (174/400) of the time in comparison to 64.8% (259/400) of the time when they were consented digitally. The majority, 86% (43/50), of digitally consented patients received a copy of the consent form in comparison to 18% (9/50) of those consented using paper. On average, the patients consented digitally were older than their paper-consented counterparts (49–58 and 59–68 respectively). The mean scores for the questions relating to the ease of reading the form, ease of understanding the form, understanding of the potential complications, and overall satisfaction were higher in those digitally consented (p < 0.05). Discussion: Overall, patients were satisfied with both methods of consent. However, individuals who were consented digitally reported higher levels of satisfaction throughout the consent process, compared to paper consent. These data suggest that digital consent is an acceptable alternative to paper consent for patients and facilitates adherence to national consent guidance, which stipulates patients should be given the information they request.

Introduction Human papillomavirus (HPV) is necessary but not sufficient for cervical cancer development. During cervical carcinogenesis, methylation levels increase across host and HPV DNA. DNA methylation has been proposed as a test to diagnose cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN); we present a protocol to evaluate the accuracy of methylation markers to detect high-grade CIN and cervical cancer. Methods and analysis We will search electronic databases (Medline, Embase and Cochrane Library), from inception, to identify studies examining DNA methylation as a diagnostic marker for CIN or cervical cancer, in a cervical screening population. The primary outcome will be to assess the diagnostic test accuracy of host and HPV DNA methylation for high-grade CIN; the secondary outcomes will be to examine the accuracy of different methylation cut-off thresholds, and accuracy in high-risk HPV positive women. Our reference standard will be histology. We will perform meta-analyses using Cochrane guidelines for diagnostic test accuracy. We will use the number of true positives, false negatives, true negatives and false positives from individual studies. We will use the bivariate mixed effect model to estimate sensitivity and specificity with 95% CIs; we will employ different bivariate models to estimate sensitivity and specificity at different thresholds if sufficient data per threshold. For insufficient data, the hierarchical summary receiver operating curve model will be used to calculate a summary curve across thresholds. If there is interstudy and intrastudy variation in thresholds, we will use a linear mixed effects model to calculate the optimum threshold. If few studies are available, we will simplify models by assuming no correlation between sensitivity and specificity and perform univariate, random-effects meta-analysis. We will assess the quality of studies using QUADAS-2 and QUADAS-C. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval is not required. Results will be disseminated to academic beneficiaries, medical practitioners, patients and the public. PROSPERO registration number CRD42022299760.

Purpose: To predict deep myometrial infiltration (DMI), clinical risk category, histological type, and lymphovascular space invasion (LVSI) in women with endometrial cancer using machine learning classification methods based on clinical and image signatures from T2-weighted MR images. Methods: A training dataset containing 413 patients and an independent testing dataset consisting of 82 cases were employed in this retrospective study. Manual segmentation of the whole tumor volume on sagittal T2-weighted MRI was performed. Clinical and radiomic features were extracted to predict: (i) DMI of endometrial cancer patients, (ii) endometrial cancer clinical high-risk level, (iii) histological subtype of tumor, and (iv) presence of LVSI. A classification model with different automatically selected hyperparameter values was created. The area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, F1 score, average recall, and average precision were calculated to evaluate different models. Results: Based on the independent external testing dataset, the AUCs for DMI, high-risk endometrial cancer, endometrial histological type, and LVSI classification were 0.79, 0.82, 0.91, and 0.85, respectively. The corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) of the AUCs were [0.69, 0.89], [0.75, 0.91], [0.83, 0.97], and [0.77, 0.93], respectively. Conclusion: It is possible to classify endometrial cancer DMI, risk, histology type, and LVSI using different machine learning methods.

Primary malignant melanoma (MM) of the cervix uteri is a rare and aggressive malignancy of the female reproductive tract. Considering that clinical data on this cancer are scarce, we aimed to comprehensively examine the currently available literature and provide an overview of the reported cases of cervical MM focusing on the clinical characteristics, diagnosis and therapeutic management. We conducted a systematic review of the literature by screening three electronic databases until June 2022. The critical appraisal checklist provided by the Joanna Briggs Institute was employed to evaluate the overall quality of the studies. We included 96 reports, which comprised 137 patients diagnosed with MM of the cervix. The mean age of the patients was 56.5 (median: 58, age range: 33–88). Data regarding menopausal status were provided for 98 patients with 15 being premenopausal and 83 being postmenopausal. The most common presenting symptom was vaginal bleeding (83%, 100/121). Biopsy (either excisional or punch biopsy) was used as the first diagnostic modality in most of the patients (67%, 64/95), followed by cytology (18%, 17/95). In 74 cases, the FIGO staging system for cervical cancer was used with the most common stage being FIGO stage I (38%, 28/74), followed by FIGO stage II (36%, 27/74), FIGO stage III (19%, 14/74) and FIGO stage IV (7%, 5/74). Most of the patients were managed surgically (90%, 119/131) with a hysterectomy (either radical or total), and a salpingo-oophorectomy with/without lymphadenectomy was the most common approach utilized (40%, 48/119). The data of clinical outcomes were provided for 105 patients, of whom 61 died (58%, 61/105) and 44 survived (42%, 44/105). Knowledge regarding the rare occurrence of MM in the cervix and the increased awareness of clinicians can prevent clinical misdiagnosis and ultimately improve further the clinical outcomes of patients developing this rare malignancy.

Background: Determination of survival time in women with endometrial cancer using clinical features remains imprecise. Features from MRI may improve the survival estimation allowing improved treatment planning.Purpose: To identify clinical features and imaging signatures on T2‐weighted MRI that can be used in an integrated model to estimate survival time for endometrial cancer subjects.Study Type: Retrospective.Population: Four hundred thirteen patients with endometrial cancer as training (N = 330, 66.41 ± 11.42 years) and validation (N = 83, 67.60 ± 11.89 years) data and an independent set of 82 subjects as testing data (63.26 ± 12.38 years).Field Strength/Sequence: 1.5‐T and 3‐T scanners with sagittal T2‐weighted spin echo sequence.Assessment: Tumor regions were manually segmented on T2‐weighted images. Features were extracted from segmented masks, and clinical variables including age, cancer histologic grade and risk score were included in a Cox proportional hazards (CPH) model. A group least absolute shrinkage and selection operator method was implemented to determine the model from the training and validation datasets.Statistical Tests: A likelihood‐ratio test and decision curve analysis were applied to compare the models. Concordance index (CI) and area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) were calculated to assess the model.Results: Three radiomic features (two image intensity and volume features) and two clinical variables (age and cancer grade) were selected as predictors in the integrated model. The CI was 0.797 for the clinical model (includes clinical variables only) and 0.818 for the integrated model using training and validation datasets, the associated mean AUC value was 0.805 and 0.853. Using the testing dataset, the CI was 0.792 and 0.882, significantly different and the mean AUC was 0.624 and 0.727 for the clinical model and integrated model, respectively.Data Conclusion: The proposed CPH model with radiomic signatures may serve as a tool to improve estimated survival time in women with endometrial cancer.Evidence Level: 4Technical Efficacy: Stage 2