Patient, disease, and treatment factors associated with overall survival in esthesioneuroblastoma

Esthesioneuroblastomas (ENB) are uncommon and data regarding outcomes are often limited to single-institution series. The National Cancer Database (NCDB), which contains outcomes information from treatment centers across the United States, represents an opportunity to evaluate outcomes for rare diseases such as ENB across multiple institutions.

The NCDB was queried for location codes corresponding to the nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses and the histology code for ENB. Multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate for contributing factors to overall survival.

A total of 1225 patients with ENB met the inclusion criteria. The 5-year overall survival was 76.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 73.4-79.0%). Overall survival was associated with Kadish stage, grade, treatment sequence, margin status, Charlson/Deyo score, age, and gender (p < 0.05). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that, compared with surgery alone, surgery followed by radiation without chemotherapy had improved all-cause mortality (odds ratio [OR], 0.61; 95% CI, 0.40-0.95). Surgery with chemotherapy alone was associated with increased odds of all-cause mortality (OR, 4.86; 95% CI, 2.31-10.25). Multivariate subanalysis for Kadish stages A and B demonstrated no difference in survival between surgery and surgery followed by radiation, but surgery followed by chemoradiation had worse overall survival (OR, 3.03; 95% CI, 1.07-8.56). For Kadish stage C, surgery followed by radiation had improved overall survival compared with surgery alone (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.24-0.81).

The most common treatment for ENB is surgery followed by radiation, which is associated with the highest overall survival. The role of adjunctive chemotherapy needs to be re-evaluated in further studies.