Clinical Evaluation of Hypopharyngeal Cancer Associated with Multiple Primary Cancers

Abstract

The incidence of synchronous or metachronous multiple primary cancers (MPCs) has increased in patients with head and neck cancer. In particular, synchronous or metachronous esophageal cancer has been frequently detected in patients with hypopharyngeal cancer (HPC). There are some cases of synchronous esophageal and HPC in which management of treatment strategy is difficult. A total of 89 patients were diagnosed with HPC between January 2003 and October 2011. We reviewed their clinical data, which consists of the incident sites, timing, and overall survival, retrospectively. A total of 52.8% of the patients with HPC were diagnosed with MPCs ; 24 cases were diagnosed with synchronous MPCs, whereas 23 cases were metachronous. The most common site of the MPCs was esophageal cancer. Overall survivals were 45.1% and 54.7% in the with-MPCs group and without-MPCs group, respectively. There were no significant differences between the two groups. We investigated the over-5-year survival rate of the synchronous hypopharyngeal and esophageal cancer group. The overall survival rate was 11.6% in the synchronous cases, a group having poor survival. To detect early HPC, endoscopic surveillance and long-term follow-up should be performed for patients with either head and neck or esophageal cancer.