The influence of some factors on local control of early glottic cancer

A total of 135 patients with T1N0M0 and T2N0M0 carcinoma of the vocal cord were treated during a 20-year period at St Mary's Hospital in Portsmouth by local radiotherapy. A total of 122 patients were available for local control analysis. The local control of T1 tumours was 80.5%, and for T2, 51.1%, total T1 + T2 local control was 69.7% (P less than 0.001). The only other factor in univariate analysis, which influenced the results was the overall treatment time. In the group of patients treated by an overall time of 45 days or less, the local control was 83.7%. For longer time it was 62% (P less than 0.02). Multivariate analysis confirmed these findings but brought out the importance of vocal cord mobility as the best discriminating factor between local control and failure, followed by overall treatment time.