Progressive functional improvement in hemiglossectomy defects reconstructed with radial forearm free flap at 6-months

The purposes of the study was to evaluate for the functional improvement of outcomes of patients undergoing surgical management for tongue cancer at varying periods after surgery.

Case series with intervention.

Thirty consecutive patients, from 2011 to 2015, with carcinoma of the tongue undergoing surgical resection and reconstruction with a radial forearm free flap.

The Speech Intelligibility Test (SIT) is used for objective evaluation of speech function. The 7-point ordinal scale Functional Oral Intake Score (FOIS) was used to estimate the swallowing function.

The patients included were 25 men and 5 women with a mean age of 50.4 years (range - 27-65). All tumors were squamous cell carcinomas and all patients underwent a hemiglossectomy. There were two complete flap failures, with a resultant flap success rate of 93.3%. The initial mean speech intelligibility scores at 1-month increased from 72.3 ± 0.2 to 77.7 ± 8.9 at 6-months after surgery (p = 0.05). Similarly, the mean score of swallowing function improved from 6.1 at 1-month to 6.8 at 6-months after surgery (p = 0.05).

Reconstruction of hemiglossectomy defects with a radial forearm free flap offers functional benefits in speech and deglutition that demonstrate progressive improvement when 1- and 6-month post-surgical assessments are compared.