Prognostic factors in supraglottic laryngeal carcinoma

We carried out a retrospective study of patients with supraglottic carcinomas who were treated surgically at the Marques de Valdecilla Hospital (Santander, Spain) between 1978 and 1987 and who were followed up for at least 5 years. The Kaplan-Meier survival curves were calculated for 24 clinical, histologic, and morphometric parameters. Multivariate analysis was then performed by means of the Cox regression model. In the univariate analysis, survival was related to presence of capsule rupture of the involved lymph nodes (p = 0.00001), number of metastatic lymph nodes (p = 0.0002), postoperative TNM stage (p = 0.004), grade of cell differentiation (p = 0.001), presence of intratumoral necrosis (p = 0.01), and type of invasion (p = 0.04). The nuclear area did not have an influence on survival. Only the presence or absence of capsule rupture of the metastatic lymph nodes and the grade of cell differentiation were included in the final Cox model and proved to be parameters with independent prognostic significance.