Cancer of the parotid gland; long-term follow-up. A single centre experience on recurrence and survival

Figures & data

Table I.  Patient characteristics. The age, gender, T-stage, N-stage, M-stage and treatment are shown.

	Number	Age, median years
Number	144	65	(range 16–89)
Male	73	67	(range 16–86)
female	71	64	(range 17–89)
T-stage
T1	17
T2	47
T3	14
T4	19
Tx	47
N-stage
N0	76
N +	39
Nx	29
M-stage
M +	8
Treatment
Surgery, alone	32
Surgery + RT	81
RT, alone	26
BSC	5

RT = radiotherapy; BSC = best supportive care; Tx = T-stage not available. Nx = N-stage not available.

Table II.  Histopathology according to original diagnosis for all studied patients. The most common diagnosis was mucoepidermoid carcinoma, followed by adenoid cystic carcinoma and adenocarcinomas.

Histopathology	Number
mucoepidermoid carcinoma	36
adenoid cystic carcinoma	26
Adenocarcinoma	24
acinic cell carcinoma	21
squamous cell carcinoma	13
mixed type carcinoma	3
Large cell carcinoma	3
adenopapillary carcinoma	2
Reticular cell carcinoma	1
adenomatous carcinoma	1
cystic papillary carcinoma	1
cancer UNS	13
Total number	144

Figure 1.  Survival in the whole group, overall survival. Information was available for 139 patients. Median survival was 6.1 years and mean survival was 10.5 years.

Figure 2.  Survival and age. Groups younger and older than the median of 65 years. Log-rank test p < 0.00001.

Figure 3.  Survival depending on N-stage. N0 = 76, N + = 39. It was possible to define the N-stage in 115 cases. Since the information was not very detailed we grouped patients with no known lymph node metastases (N = 0) or with known lymph node metastases present (N + ) at diagnosis. The outcome for patients with N + disease was worse, with a 5-year survival of 15% while N0 disease had a 5-year survival of 78%. p < 0.00001.