Background: Laryngeal cancer has one of the worst recurrence rates for any malignancy, is known to be influenced by several environmental factors, and it is significantly more common in males than females. Familial clusterings of laryngeal cancer have been reported but no systematic evaluation of the clinical feature of the disease or an in-depth analysis of familial forms of the disease has been made. In this study we wished to determine if there are any clinical features of the disease that may be useful for the identification of genetic susceptibility loci associated with the disorder.
Methods: Seven hundred and fifty-three unselected consecutive laryngeal cancer patients were analyzed depending on sex, age, smoking behavior, and clinical features (localization, tumor size, lymph node metastases, grading, and staging) and the presence of cancer among first-degree relatives. The presence of at least a second relative affected by laryngeal cancer was considered to be a Familial Larynx Cancer (FLC) case (44 patients).
Results: Women in the FLC group had larger tumors, higher proportion of lymph node metastases, higher grading, staging, and a tendency towards supraglottic localization than the sporadic larynx cancer cases. The aggressive pattern characterized by presence of metastases, tumor size >2, and grading=3 revealed to be significantly associated with FLC (OR=10.02, p=0.0003).
Conclusions: The study revealed a distinct clinical pattern of disease in familial cases of laryngeal cancer, which may provide a valuable basis for the identification of genetic determinants of this malignancy.