Impact of the early detection of esophageal neoplasms in hypopharyngeal cancer patients treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy.

AIMS: We examined the risk factors and prognostic factors for synchronous esophageal neoplasia (SEN) by comparing the characteristics of hypopharyngeal cancer (HPC) patients with and without SEN.

METHODS

We examined 183 patients who were treated with definitive radiotherapy for HPC. Lugol chromoendoscopy screening of the esophagus was performed in all patients before chemoradiotherapy.

RESULTS

Thirty-six patients had SEN, 49 patients died of HPC and two died of esophageal cancer. The patients with SEN exhibited significantly higher alcohol consumption than those without SEN (P = 0.018). The 5-year overall survival (OS) rate of the 36 patients with SEN was lower than that of the other patients (36.2% vs 63.4%, P = 0.006). The SEN patients exhibited significantly shorter HPC cause-specific survival than the other patients (P = 0.039). Both the OS (P = 0.005) and the HPC cause-specific survival (P = 0.026) of the patients with SEN were significantly shorter than those of the patients without SEN in multivariate analysis. Category 4/T1 stage esophageal cancer was treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT), endoscopic treatment or chemotherapy. The 5-year survival rates for esophageal cancer recurrence for CCRT, endoscopic treatment and chemotherapy were 71.5, 43.7 and 0%, respectively. The median (range) survival time (months) of CCRT, endoscopic treatment and chemotherapy was 22.7 (7.5-90.6), 46.44 (17.3-136.7) and 7.98 (3.72-22.8), respectively.

CONCLUSION

Advanced HPC patients with SEN might have a poorer prognosis than those without SEN even when the esophageal cancer is detected early and managed appropriately.