Perioperative mortality of head and neck cancers

Head and neck cancers are aggressive cancers, most clinical studies focused on the prognosis of patients with head and neck cancer. However, perioperative mortality was rarely mentioned.

A retrospective analysis was performed using all head and neck cancer patients admitting in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery of the Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University from January 2010 to December 2019. The analysis of overall survival and progression-free survival were performed using the Kaplan-Meier method, and cross tabulation with chi-squared testing was applied to analyze the difference in parameters between groups.

From January 2010 to December 2019, a total of 6576 patients with head and neck cancers were admitted to our department and 7 died in the hospital, all of whom were middle-aged and elderly patients including 6 males and 1 female. The perioperative mortality rate (POMR) was about 1‰. The causes of death included acute heart failure, rupture of large blood vessels in the neck, hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy due to asphyxia, respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest.

Preoperative radiotherapy, previous chemotherapy, hypertension, diabetes, advanced clinical stage and postoperative infection are risk factors for perioperative mortality of head and neck cancer.