| pubmed-article:7644741 | pubmed:abstractText | A retrospective study was carried out on a series of 154 patients affected with vocal cord cancer in stage T1 treated with definitive radiotherapy April, 1979, to November, 1991. According to the 1992 TNM classification (UICC), 121 patients were classified as stage T1a and 33 patients as stage T1b. All patients were treated using parallel opposed fields of a 60 cobalt unit. Field size ranged from 16 to 30 square centimeters and the dose from 4400 to 7000 cGy, but only 15 patients received less than 6400 cGy. All patients were treated with once-daily fractionation (200 cGy/day). Follow-up ranges from 25 to 123 months; the median is 63 months. We observed 14 local recurrences (9.0%), all but one within 36 months from the end of treatment. Ten of 14 patients (71.4%) were rescued by surgery (8 patients underwent total laryngectomy and 2 conservative surgery); 13 patients were lost for intercurrent deaths. The incidence of recurrences is 7.4% for T1a patients (9/121) and 15.1% for T1b patients (5/33). The total dose does not seem to be related to relapse rate since recurrences were found in 6.6% of patients after a dose < 6400 cGy and in 9.3% of patients who had received higher doses. In our experience, field size did not affect, treatment results (< 25 cm2: 7.5% recurrences, > 25 cm2: 10.7%). Besides lesion volume, the main prognostic factor was overall treatment time. The incidence of failure was 3 times lower (5.8%) in the patients who completed the treatment within 7 weeks than in the patients whose treatment lasted more than 8 weeks (16.6%). | lld:pubmed |
