Purpose: Laryngeal cancer is relatively common and usually presents with hoarseness due to a lesion in the glottis. We noticed that many of our patients had presented with supraglottic lesions and we could not find local literature in support of this observation. Mode of presentation and site of the lesion of these patients will be addressed in this review.
Materials and methods: A retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study for laryngeal cancer patients who received radiotherapy at a tertiary radiotherapy center in Iraq, from January 2010 to December 2015, and who are residents in the Sulaimani governorate.
Results: In 6 years, laryngeal cancer patients from Sulaimani were 83 (out of 123 in total), which constituted the most common, 40.8%, head and neck cancers. 86.7% were males and the median age was 68.3 year. Most common presentation was hoarseness, 79.5%, and the least was dysphagia and stridor, 28.9%. Pain and neck swelling were found in 51.8%, 34.9%, respectively. Site of the cancer lesions were in supraglottis in 53%, glottis in 32.5%, transglottis in 8.4%, and subglottis in 6%. Commonest stage was IVA in 54.2% while the least was IVB 2.4%. Squamous cell carcinoma was the pathological type in all of our patients.
Conclusion: Laryngeal cancer is the most common head and neck cancer in our institutional registry. While all the pathologies were of squamous cell carcinoma, hoarseness was the most common presentation and supraglottis was the most common site of involvement.