‘When will I see you again?’ Using local recurrence data to develop a regimen for routine surveillance in post-treatment head and neck cancer patients

Objective:  To develop an evidence-based regimen for routine surveillance of post-treatment head and neck cancer patients. Design:  Review of 10 years of prospectively collected patient data. Main outcome measures:  Time of first presentation of ‘new cancer event’ (either first recurrence or second primary tumour). We did not evaluate whether or not the detected new cancer events were curable. Results:  Data from patients with primary squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx, oropharynx and hypopharynx were analysed. A total of 676 previously undiagnosed squamous cell carcinomas were recorded in these regions. In these patients there were 105 recurrences and 20 second primary cancers were recorded; 95th percentile of “time to a new cancer event” was calculated in years. These were for larynx 4.7 years, oropharynx 2.7 years, hypopharynx 2.3 years. The time to new cancer event was similar for early and late laryngeal cancers. Only 36 (47%) of the hypopharyngeal cancers were treated with curative intent and of these 36% had a previously undiagnosed cancer event. Conclusion:  Local data and published evidence support a follow-up duration of 7 years for laryngeal primaries and 3 years for both oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal primaries. Late stage oropharyngeal cancers may require longer follow up than early cancers. Patients who continue to smoke may need longer follow up. A change in local follow-up protocol to this regimen would save 10 patient slots every week with no detriment to patient care. Clin. Otolaryngol. 2009, 34, 546–551.