To Örebro University

BACKGROUND/AIM: Post-treatment surveillance of patients with squamous cell oropharyngeal carcinoma (SCOPC) consists of routine follow-up visits for 5 years. It has been suggested that this program is inefficient for finding recurrences and increasing survival. The primary study objective was to investigate how recurrences after treatment for SCOPC were detected, i.e., at routine follow-up visits, at patient-initiated visits, or incidentally. The secondary objective was to investigate whether 2-year survival after diagnosis of recurrence depended on the manner of detection.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients with recurrences from SCOPC between 1988 and 2018 were included. Survival was analysed by the Kaplan-Meier method with log-rank test.

RESULTS: A total of 75 patients were included. Almost one-third were alive 2 years after the diagnosis of recurrence. Recurrences were detected at routine follow-up visits in 50.7%, at patient-initiated visits in 42.7% and 6.6% were found incidentally. There was an increased survival in the patient-initiated group, but this was not significant.

CONCLUSION: The majority of recurrences in both groups compared were amenable to curative treatment.