2020 Volume 113 Issue 2 Pages 105-109
Carcinoma of the external auditory canal is a rare disease entity, accounting for less than 0.2% of all head and neck cancers. We retrospectively analyzed the clinical characteristics and treatment outcomes of patients with this disease.
The patients were 23 newly diagnosed cases of carcinoma of the external auditory canal who were treated in our department between 2005 and 2018. They consisted of 11 males and 12 females, aged 41 to 93 years with an average of 69.4 years. The tumor stage at diagnosis was T1 in 13 patients, T2 in 4 patients, T3 in 1 patient and T4 in 5 patients. The histopathological type was squamous cell carcinoma in 19 patients (82.6%). Eighteen patients underwent radical surgery, including tumor resection (in 3 patients) and lateral temporal bone resection (in 15 patients). Superficial parotidectomy, resection of the mandibular condyle and neck dissection were concomitantly performed in 2, 1 and 2 patients, respectively.
The overall 5-year crude and disease-specific survival rates determined by the Kaplan-Meier method were 65.0% and 75.1%, respectively. The crude and disease-specific survival rates were significantly higher in patients with T1–3 tumors than in those with T4 tumors (P=0.002, P<0.001), and also significantly higher in patients who underwent surgery than in those who did not (P=0.001, P=0.007). Four patients died of the disease, including 3 with T4 disease and one 92-year-old super-elderly.
These results indicate the validity of surgical treatment for T1–3 cases and suggest that the therapeutic strategy needs to be reconsidered for T4 cases to improve the treatment outcomes.
