Background: Head and neck osteosarcoma (HNOS) is a rare primary bone tumor with limited data to guide treatment approaches.
Methods: The NCDB was used to identify patients diagnosed with HNOS. Kaplan-Meier and Cox multivariate regression were used to examine the impact of each treatment on overall survival (OS).
Results: We identified 821 patients diagnosed with HNOS. Utilization of neoadjuvant chemotherapy + surgery increased from zero cases in 2004 to 24% of cases in 2016. Among surgically treated patients, 5-year OS was 55.8% (CI: 51.7-60.1%). No difference was seen in OS between each treatment cohort on multivariate analysis. However, neoadjuvant chemotherapy + surgery + adjuvant chemotherapy had improved 18-month survival compared to surgery alone (95.8% vs. 78.5%, p = 0.031).
Conclusions: Our study demonstrated no survival benefit in perioperative chemotherapy or radiation therapy; however, short-term survival improvement in patients receiving both neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy displays promise and requires further investigation.
Keywords: National Cancer Database; chemotherapy; head and neck osteosarcoma; survival outcomes; treatment; trends.
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