Introduction: For most patients with squamous head and neck cancer (HN-SCC), locoregional tumour recurrence (TR) carries an extremely poor prognosis and is therapeutically challenging.
Objective: To define the clinical aspects of TR and their implication on the survival in patients with HN-SCC.
Patients and method: The clinical management and the outcome of 652 patients with HN-SCC were reviewed.
Results: The overall incidence of TR in this series of HN-SCC was 19.9% (n=130). The most frequent locations of the primary cancers were oropharynx (32%), hypopharynx (24%), and oral cavity (21%). The rates of recurrence were locoregional 50%, local 43 % and stomal recurrence 7%. The appearance of a TR reduces the overall survival of patients with HN-SCC to 15%. Survival is better in glottic (38%) and supraglottic (27%), carcinomas, and worse in oro-hypopharynx tumours (2-4%).
Conclusions: RT are more frequent in pharyngeal tumours, especially locoregional recurrences. Patients with recurrence in pharynx were definitely associated with poor prognosis and in these cases salvage surgery seems not to improve survival rates.