SAN FRANCISCO Patients who received adjuvant radiotherapy following surgery for metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma survived more than twice as long as did those who did not receive radiotherapy in a small retrospective study.
The difference between median survival of 23 months with adjuvant radiotherapy and 10 months without the extra treatment was statistically significant, Dr. Babak Givi reported at the Seventh International Conference on Head and Neck Cancer.
Patients receiving adjuvant radiotherapy were more than 80% less likely to die than were those who did not receive this adjuvant treatment, said Dr. Givi of Oregon Health and Science University, Portland.
Surgery followed by radiotherapy has long been a standard treatment for metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, but Dr. Givi noted that there is a paucity of experimental data on its efficacy. Given the fact that this regimen is aggressive and carries a high degree of morbidity, he and his colleagues conducted a retrospective study involving 51 patients who received surgical treatment for metastatic squamous cell carcinoma between 1993 and 2008. Thirty of the patients received adjuvant radiotherapy.
The patients' median age was 73 years, and 47 patients were male. The disease was recurrent in 8 patients and previously untreated in 43. Those whose disease had recurred survived for a median of 14 months compared with 31 months among those who had not previously been treated.
After adjusting for age, immunosuppression, tumor characteristics, and recurrent disease in a multivariate analysis, the investigators found that patients with recurrent disease were almost three times as likely to die as were those without.
The conference was sponsored by the American Head and Neck Society.