Treatment of Sinonasal Squamous Cell Carcinoma: The Experience at a Single Tertiary Care Facility Over 32 Years

Background and Objective: Relative to many other head and neck cancers, sinonasal squamous cell carcinoma (SNSCC) is a rare malignancy of the head and neck with notably poor prognosis. Although it is the most common carcinoma of the sinonasal cavity, it comprises only 3 to 5% of all head and neck cancers. Treatment of SNSCC classically entails surgical resection followed by adjuvant radiotherapy. A trend toward endoscopic over open tumor resection has resulted in fewer postoperative complications and surgical morbidity, unfortunately with seemingly no significant improvement in survival. Prognosis for SNSCC remains poor with reports of 5-year survival of as low as 50%. Current knowledge and further research of this malignancy is limited by small sample sizes. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the patient characteristics and outcome data among patients with SNSCC treated at a single tertiary care facility.

Methods: We performed retrospective review to analyze the epidemiologic patient characteristics and comorbidities, pathological characteristics, staging, treatment modality, and complications, and survival among patients treated with SNSCC at a single tertiary care hospital from 1987 through 2019.

Results: We identified a total of 59 patients meeting our search criteria. Of them, 17 (28.8%) were female and 42 (71.2%) were male. Average age at diagnosis of our cohort was 60.3 years with a minimum age of 28.7 years and a maximum age of 90.6 years. Of those that had documented smoking history, 42 out of 58 (72.4%) had documented smoking history. Overall 5-year survival for our cohort was 59%.

Conclusion: Here, we report the experience of patients treated for SNSCC at a single tertiary care facility including analysis of patient characteristics, pathological characteristics, staging, treatment modality and complications, and survival.