Survival of the patients treated for Head and Neck Cancer in a Low resource country - A retrospective study
Abstract
Background: Worldwide Head and Neck cancer- HNC is the 6th most frequent cancer, with an estimated world incidence of over 600,000 new cases per year and 300,000 deaths yearly. Despite successful primary therapy of advanced local and regional disease, 50-60 % of head and neck cancer patients die from local recurrences, while 20 – 30 % of them die from distant metastases, and 10 – 40 % die from secondary malignancy due to treatment. Methods: This was a retrospective descriptive study conducted at ORCI, the only Centre for treatment of cancer in Tanzania at the time of the data collection. A total of 200 randomly selected files of the patients with a diagnosis of Squamous Cell Carcinoma of Head and Neck treated from 1st January 2009 to 31st December 2011 were used for the study. A standardized data collecting tool was used to obtain socio-demographic characteristics, clinicopathological characteristics, and different treatment modalities that were used in the treatment of the patients. Results: The majority of HNC patients studied were above 56 years; The overall survival was 59%. The factors seen to be associated with survival in this study were; stage at diagnosis P-value =0.003, anatomical site of the tumor P-value =0.038 and total amount of radiation dose given P-value = 0.043. Conclusion: Early stages of HNC, anatomical sites of the disease, and standard high radiation doses of >40Gy are associated with more prolonged survival in patients with HNC.
