Comparison of RPA-derived staging and AJCC staging in head and neck cancers based on RTOG data
✍ Scribed by Jay S. Cooper; Charles B. Scott; Sucha O. Asbell; Marvin Rotman; Victor Marcial; Karen K. Fu; W. Gillies McKenna; Bahman Emami
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1996
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 451 KB
- Volume
- 4
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1065-7541
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
We sought to evaluate the value of a new staging system for head and neck (H&N) cancers that was derived by recursive partitioning analysis (RPA) as compared to the traditional American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) system. RPA is a statistical technique that separates heterogeneous populations into homogeneous subgroups. We analyzed the outcome of 2,105 patients, who had squamous cell carcinomas of the H&N that were irradiated as part of four RTOG protocols. RPA created six stages of disease using survival as the measure of outcome as compared to four stages in the AJCC system. Although the assignment of tumors to stage groupings in the two systems did correlate, there was substantial disparity between the systems. This suggests that RPA recognizes factors that influence outcome which are not addressed by the AJCC system. RPA derived staging provides an alternative way to classify H&N tumors. It can (1) disclose the presence of factors currently not recognized by the AJCC system, (2) provide an additional basis for selection of patient specific therapy, and (3) potentially be used to improve the AJCC system in the future.