Glottic Cancer: A Metamorphosing Disease.

OBJECTIVE

Conventional wisdom is that the overwhelming majority of glottic cancer patients have a smoking history. However, in recent years observations suggested that an increasing number of glottic cancer patients had never been smokers. Therefore, an investigation was done examining the incidence of having a smoking history in a recent cohort of glottic cancer patients.

METHOD: Retrospective review of 100 patients with glottic cancer to determine those reporting never having smoked.

RESULTS

Thirty-one of 100 did not have a smoking history. Clinical observations of those cases revealed that the disease morphology tended to be exophytic, papillary, and very vascular, often resembling recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP). Remarkably, 2 of 31 were initially treated elsewhere assuming they had RRP and underwent 5 cidofovir injections. Both presented with advanced cancer, and the disease growth markedly accelerated coincident with the injections.

CONCLUSIONS

Observations herein provide new insights that glottic cancer may be an evolving disease in which smoking is less exclusive, not unlike HPV-induced pharynx cancer. Similar to RRP, the angiogenic papillary disease morphology is well suited for voice-preserving angiolytic KTP laser treatment. Given the resemblance of some glottic cancers to RRP, great care should be taken when using cidofovir for papillary glottic neoplasms.