The prognosis of patients with hypopharyngeal cancer (HPC) remains poor. Our study aims to investigate the prognostic impact of cortactin in patients with HPC and its role for tegafur-uracil (UFUR) maintenance after adjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Patients who were diagnosed to have HPC and underwent laryngopharyngectomy followed by adjuvant CRT were enrolled into our study. Immunohistochemical staining was performed for cortactin evaluation. Kaplan-Meier curves were depicted for recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). A total of 157 patients were enrolled into our study. After stratified by cortactin, 53 patients were cortactin (+) and 104 patients were cortactin (-). The median RFS was 86.7 months in cortactin (-) and 10.2 months in cortactin (+) (P < 0.001). The median OS was 93.4 months in cortactin (-) and 16.9 months in cortactin (+) (P < 0.001). Patients were further classified according to UFUR maintenance or not after adjuvant CRT. In cortactin (+) patients, the median RFS and OS were 13.6 months versus 7.0 months (P = 0.006) and 24.0 months versus 10.0 months (P < 0.001) in UFUR (+) and UFUR (-), respectively. In cortactin (-) patients, the median RFS and OS were 96.0 months versus 72.2 months (P = 0.262) and 98.5 months versus 105.0 months (P = 0.665) in UFUR (+) and UFUR (-), respectively. Cortactin has a significantly impact in HPC patients. UFUR maintenance provided survival benefits in patients with cortactin (+) after adjuvant CRT.
Keywords: Cortactin; chemoradiotherapy; hypopharyngeal cancer; prognosis; survival; tegafur-uracil.
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