Role of Salvage Surgery in Recurrent and Second Primary Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Squamous cell carcinomas of head and neck region usually carry a poor prognosis despite being subjected to multimodality treatment. The recurrence rate in cancers of the oral cavity are almost 20-30% in early stage and approximately 50% in advanced stages. Salvage surgery carries the highest survival advantage in both recurrent and second primary cancers of the oral cavity. We present a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected dataset of a tertiary care centre of 40 patients which included 28 recurrent and 12 patients of second primary head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. The study was conducted to identify factors that are associated with a poor disease outcome of surgical salvage for recurrent and second primary HNSCC. Advanced tumour stage and higher WPOI score were found to be associated with poorer prognosis.