Page 40 - Sentinel lymph node biopsy in oral cavity cancer - Inne J. den Toom

Chapter 2 There were 51 patients staged as pT1 (59%) and 36 as pT2 (41%). Upstaging of the cN0 neck in pT2 lesions occurred significantly more frequently compared to pT1 lesions (47% vs. 18%; p = 0.003). The regional recurrence rates for pT1 and pT2 lesions were 1/51 (2%) and 4/36 (11%) respectively, however did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.15). Survival analysis Between SLNB negative and SLNB positive patients OS and DSS were similar because none of the patients died from other causes than the disease. For all patients, OS and DFS were 92% and 85%, respectively. Stratification by N-stage resulted in OS and DFS of 100% and 84%, respectively for SLNB negative patients and 73% and 88% respectively, for SLNB positive patients. SLNB negative patients had statistically significant better OS (p = 0.002, Figure 1), whereas the difference in DFS was not statistically significant (p = 0.11). For multiple comparisons in the Kaplan-Meier method a Bonferroni correction was applied. With respect to the type of metastasis, a significant lower overall survival rate was demonstrated for patients with macrometastases compared to SLNB negative 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 Figure 1. Overall survival in patients with SLNB negative and SLNB positive tumours (p = 0.002) Cumulative Overall Survival 0 12 24 36 48 60 72 Follow-up (m) Sentinel lymph nodes negative positive 38