Introduction/Background Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) represents an alternative to pelvic lymphadenectomy (PLND) for lymph node staging of early stage cervical carcinoma but prospective evidence on long-term oncological safety is actually missing. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of SLNB alone versus PLND on survival for early stage cervical cancers patients.

Methodology A systematic literature review was performed by June 2022. We excluded studies where systematic PLND was performed. A meta-analysis was carried out combining 5-year DFS and OS rates with random and fixed effect model. Heterogeneity was tested using the Cochran chi-square test and quantified with Higgins information i2.

Results The search of databases and registers found 927 items and 6 articles were finally retained. The median time of follow-up was 34.8 months. Overall common effect DFS was 0.98, random effect DFS was 0.94. Overall heterogeneity was 77%. The subgroup analysis on SLNB negative data only indicated common effect DFS 0.91 and random effect DFS 0.90. Negative and positive SLNB subgroup common effect DFS was 0.98 and random effect DFS was 0.96. In the analysis of OS positive and negative SLN cases were examined together (common and random effect OS 0.99).

Conclusion SLN biopsy alone instead of PLND doesn’t affect survival rates with a reduction of complications due to surgery procedure. Anyways, very few studies are available in literature with a great heterogeneity between them.

Disclosures Survival rates after SLN biopsy alone are high both in global and subgroup analysis and they do not differ from literature PLND survival rates.