Differential characteristics of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck according to gender

Abstract

Objective: To analyse the trend in the percentage of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck of female gender over the last decades, and differences in survival according to gender.

Material and methods: Retrospective study of 5,828 squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck diagnosed during the period 1985-2019. In the survival analysis we only included only patients with more than two years of follow-up.

Results: The proportion of tumours in female patients increased significantly over the study period. There was greater increase of tumours located in the oral cavity, oropharynx and larynx in the percentage of female patients. When considering the total number of patients, there were no significant differences in disease-specific survival according to gender. We observed a variable behaviour of disease-specific survival according to gender depending on the primary location of the tumour. For tumours of the larynx and oropharynx the female patients had a disease-specific survival significantly higher than that of men, while for tumours of the oral cavity, the female patients had a significant reduction of disease-specific survival.

Conclusions: In our setting, the percentage of female patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck has been increasing steadily over recent decades. There were differences in disease-specific survival according to gender depending on the location of the primary tumour.

Keywords: Carcinoma escamoso de cabeza y cuello; Diferencias en función del género; Differences depending on sex; Epidemiology; Epidemiología; Gender; Género; Sex; Sexo; Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck; Supervivencia; Survival.