Spiotto MT, et al. - A comparative scrutiny was pursued of the survival outcomes for surgery + postoperative radiotherapy (S+RT) with surgery + postoperative chemoradiation (S+CRT) in patients presenting with oral tongue cancers, displaying intermediate-risk pathological features. The findings shed light on the correlation between S+CRT with improved survival for patients with tongue cancers with ≥2 MLNs and/or pT3-pT4. It was determined that specific intermediate-risk pathological characteristics gained an advantage from therapeutic intensification.

Methods

• Data was extracted from the National Cancer Database (NCDB).
• An estimation was carried out of the overall survival (OS) for S+RT or S+CRT via the Kaplan-Meier methods and Cox proportional hazard models in the entire population (n = 2803) and in a propensity-matched cohort (n = 1136).

Results

• It was illustrated that the 3-year OS was 73.3% for S+CRT versus 66.7% for S+RT (P = .02).
• The S+CRT exhibited an improvement in the 3-year OS for patients with 2 or more involved metastatic lymph nodes (≥2 MLNs; P = .01).
• This was not observed in patients with <2 MLNs (P = .73).
• Undergoing S+CRT resulted in an improvement of the 3-year OS for patients with pathologic T classification (pT) pT3-pT4 disease (P = .01) but not for patients with pT1-pT2 disease (P = .18).