Comparison of primary and secondary treatment in squamous oral cancer

✍ Scribed by Condict Moore; Michael B. Flynn; Robert Knox; Donald A. Newman; Richard A. Greenberg

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 442 KB
• Volume: 34
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-4790
• DOI: 10.1002/jso.2930340203

✦ Synopsis

A popular rule of thumb has often prevailed in treating oral cancer: Try one modality first; if it fails, try the other--the chance for cure will still be good. To study this dogma, a group of 160 consecutive patients with oral cavity squamous carcinoma were reviewed. A hypothesis was formed: secondary treatment for recurrent cancer, whether surgery after radiation failure or vice versa, would salvage essentially as many patients as primary treatment, say within 15%. Results show a large difference in success rates between first and second treatments when all stages are considered together, a difference well over 15 percentage points. Regarding each stage separately, the largest difference occurs in stage II (28 percentage points); other stages exceed 15 point differences. No significant differences in successful salvage occur between "home" failures and "elsewhere" failures. Local recurrence was a major cause of failure in both groups (55%). We conclude that recurrence of oral squamous cancer after first treatment markedly reduces patients' chance for cure.